It’s been a few weeks since we hit our crowdfunding target for Change the Story! This is our campaign to get diverse books into schools. We raised more than £55,000 to get 10,000 inclusive and representative books into schools and nurseries! So we thought we’d give a little update to let you know how it’s all going and what we still have left to do.
Choosing schools and nurseries
We’ve been working really closely with KPMG UK, who donated 4,400 books to the campaign, to identify the nurseries who will receive a box of books.
This has been such a tough job. There are so many nurseries and schools in the UK, and we can only donate to 100 this time round.
BUT we have been well guided by what we set out to do.
What is Change the Story?
…the campaign was set up to help more children see themselves in story books. We also want to help all children better understand the world and their place in it. With this in mind, we have chosen nurseries and schools based on several factors including things like; the ethnic diversity of the local authority and the schools, proportion of pupils on free school meals, hate crime statistics and a few other factors. It’s hard to just use one statistic or metric because everybody needs to see diversity on bookshelves.
We do have an exhaustive list of schools and nurseries. So, one day, we hope to have sent a box to every place on there…Watch this space.
In the meantime, back to the project…
Progress
We have moved all our book packing to an amazing warehouse in Durham, where Carol and her team are now packing up all our books. This includes the 10,000 we are sending out for Change the Story.
The books will be packed up in the first couple of weeks in November and sent to schools.
Learning resources
We have created a wonderful learning resource to go with our boxes of books, with age appropriate activities designed to teach children to accept, understand and celebrate diversity. We have created resources to help teachers chat to parents about diversity and inclusion. Additionally, we have provided some great ideas for how parents can talk to their children about racism, about diversity in families, about disabilities.
Donors
We wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without the support of the more than 1000 people who donated to the campaign, KPMG and Clare Aggarwal from Renew Beauty, and without the support of our ever growing list of publishing partners some of whom have donated books or have given us extremely generous discounts.
With huge thanks to Barefoot Books, Child’s Play Books, Flying Eye Books, Walker Books, Raintree, Penguin, Macmillan, to MMS and Bounce Marketing.
We will update further when we have more news. Thank you so much for your interest and your support.