In 2010, KeyBank provided an additional grant of ten thousand dollars from the KeyBank Foundation to continue the BookNooks Initiative. The BookNooks Program which was established and copyrighted in 2000 by Project Flight in partnership with KeyBank gives agencies, schools, teachers, parents and students, pre-k through senior high, access to a carefully selected special collection of books and reading programs.  BookNooks also provides a special parent-teacher resource library, which gives concrete information on activities that, encourage a child’s success in school. This outreach effort is designed to establish a cadre of children, teachers, and their caregivers who will commit to fostering literacy activities and reading together regularly.  Precious moments are created when books are shared.  These moments are a gift that will remain forever because they create a world touched by love and imagination.  They stir children’s imagination, spark communication, and allow children to invent their future.

This program was established in all the elementary schools in Buffalo (54) and at Enterprise Charter School, as well as seven outlying area schools. In all, 181,702 new books were donated, and the number of students and families served in the five area counties was over 1,184,426 to 222 school and agencies. The success of this program has been demonstrated by increased reading scores on standardized tests and by self-reported teacher/parent comments. This program specifically addresses the development of parents as reading partners with their children and addresses the need for children to read for meaning and interpretation. At the high school level, the mentoring of freshmen through seniors is accomplished by focus on all four of the New York English Language Arts Standards.