For me, a life without books would be hard to imagine,” says Cindy Spiegel, a former JWI Woman to Watch and co-founder of Spiegel and Grau, a division of the Doubleday Book Group at Random House.

Cindy Spiegel at JWI’s 2006 Women to Watch awards

Spiegel was asked to be part of the JWI National Library Initiative committee around the same time her son, Jonathan Kupfer, was looking for a tzedakah project for his bar mitzvah. She soon realized the NLI was a “natural fit,” and along with her family donated the full amount needed to create a JWI children’s library. The Sarah Burke House, a domestic violence shelter in the Bronx operated by Sanctuary for Families, is the beneficiary.

In addition to volunteering at the shelter, Jonathan will serve as a Library Ambassador: Each of his bar mitzvah invitations will include information about the NLI, to encourage donations that will go towards new children’s books. His sister Rachel Kupfer, 15, also hopes to get involved as a volunteer.

“It’s a huge challenge choosing a project in which you can truly become invested,” says Spiegel. “For me, it only starts with the bar mitzvah. I hope this is something we can be involved in for years.”

According to Shelly B. Rose, director of operations for Sanctuary for Families, 56 families - including 70 or more children, half under 5 years old - reside at Sarah Burke House at any given time. Spiegel’s library donation will allow the shelter to transform an underutilized multipurpose room into a dedicated kid-friendly space. “We are looking for innovative ways to engage children and families,” says Rose. “The children’s library concept offers us a way to do this on many levels.”

“A lot of the kids who come to our shelter don’t have regular access to a library or have had their schooling interrupted by frequent moves,” says Michelle Lawrence, children’s program supervisor for Sanctuary for Families. “Learning to read, and falling in love with reading, often hasn’t happened. Having the library on the premises will help us prepare children for school and nurture healthy reading habits.”

Sanctuary for Families, the largest nonprofit in New York state dedicated to serving domestic violence victims and their children, provides services in nine locations, including the Sarah Burke House and a headquarters office in Manhattan. For the second phase of this project JWI is engaging the New York community to raise an additional $10,000. Phase Two funding will keep the shelves of the new library stocked with books for years to come, and provide the Manhattan office of Sanctuary for Families with books for children who accompany their mothers on visits to the office for counseling and other services.