Words by Lindsay Brownless, Head of Marketing and Engagement
“On Monday, 7 March 2022, ElectraLink’s volunteer crew assembled in London to spend the day with the wonderful people at the Children’s Book Project. This charitable organisation collects, sorts, and distributes books for children throughout the UK.
We were able to be involved in the full lifecycle of the books from arrival to being sorted and shipped during our day of volunteering:
- In the morning, we set up our sorting stations and started inspecting the condition of the books before carefully organising them into appropriate piles, such as baby books, phonetics, young chapter books etc.
- Mid-morning, as the team made headway with our hoard, a van arrived with over 50 bags of donations from a local school – we helped unload the several hundred kilograms of books.
- Around midday, having worked up a sweat, we were assigned duties ranging from stacking on the correct shelves to deciphering the language books and sorting them, and packing up any unsuitable books (e.g. adult fiction, niche themes, books with handwriting and damage) which are then passed to other charities that can use them.
- After lunch, everyone got involved to pick and pack orders from local schools, ensuring a mixture of books meeting the children’s different needs were chosen, boxed and ready to send.
The ElectraLink volunteers had a lot of fun, enjoyed some laughs, accepted our inevitable sore muscles and learned a lot about the Children’s Book Project.
Thank you to the Children’s Book Project for having us and making us part of this great effort to bring the joy of learning and imagination to children.”
About the Children’s Book Project
One in four disadvantaged children in the UK has fewer than ten books of their own at home, and one in eight has none.
The Children’s Book Project seeks to tackle book poverty and to give every child the opportunity to own their own book. The Project believes in empowering children to choose a book they are motivated to read, and in the power of reading communities. We put on book gifting events that are inclusive, joyful and have a tangible impact on every family that participates.
Poverty is by no means the only reason for a lack of books in many homes. Lack of time, negative experiences as a child or lack of confidence about their own reading skills or book choices can all undermine a family’s propensity to own books.
The Project has gifted over half a million books to date.