Welcome to the first of our charity profiles! As you're hopefully aware by now all the proceeds of our raffle are going to our charitable partner Give a Book, a literacy charity who work with other charities to get books to those who need them. As part of this event we thought it would be cool to post about some of the charities they work with, so that you can get a better idea of the kinds of things your book box and raffle ticket buying is supporting.
Doorstep Library is a London based charity currently working in Hammersmith & Fulham and Westminster. They send pairs of volunteers with rucksacks full of books around to low income families once a week. The volunteers read stories with the children and lend them books to exchange the next week. They also work with parents to show them how easy it is to read with children and to connect them with community initiatives such as libraries and reading groups.
The benefits of reading and especially reading as a family are well documented and include better language skills, more confidence for parents and kids, better attention span at school, and better relationships among other things. According to Doorstep Library's website the UK is the country that shows the clearest link between poor literacy and unemployment in the developed world, meaning that literacy skills developed (or not) in childhood are likely to have a huge impact on how the rest of a child's life goes here in the UK. Children from low income families are least likely to have access to books at home for any number of reasons, and so bringing books to them and helping families to become more literate has a real effect on the future trajectory of their education and their lives.
There are many ways to get involved with Doorstep Library. If you're in the area you can become one of the volunteers who goes around to houses and reads with children. You can fundraise, donate money and of course at the moment you can buy tickets for our raffle!
We here at Ninja Book Box are lucky to have grown up submerged in books (almost literally at times) and it is such a privilege. In 2011 the Evening Standard reported that one in three children in the UK doesn't have a single book in their home and while this can be for a variety of reasons, it highlights the importance of the work that charities like Doorstep Library are doing. As well as the very real link between literacy and future career paths, reading also affects your ability to empathise, and can help to reduce instances of dementia and mental illness including depression and anxiety. It helps to educate and stimulates a desire to learn about the world as well as actually helping you to sleep better. Reading is great, and we're really glad to be supporting a charity doing such great, active work in bringing literacy into families who really need it.
Below are the prizes included in one of our three prize bundles. Each raffle ticket gets you another chance to win one of our amazing bundles of books & bookish items!
Prize Bundle #2 (missing pictures of a 5 book bundle, a 2 book bundle & an artwork commission). Check out what's in the other prize bundles here.