Darren Rowse Where I think out loud

Update on the Books for Kids Fundraiser – 24 Hours to Go

It’s been a week since I called for people to help me raise money to buy a group of refugee kids some books here in Melbourne.

A quick recap of the story – a teacher asked a class of children to bring their favorite books to school one day. In the whole class only four children had books – most of which were either damaged or things that they’d gotten in cereal boxes.

You can read the full story of the need here.

I was really challenged by the story and wanted to do something to help. The goal is to raise enough money to send each of the kids in this class (and perhaps even school) home with a book or two.

So far readers of this blog have raised $1197 USD – that’s a great effort (thanks so much to everyone who has donated) but I’d love to see it go higher before I close off this fundraiser in 24 hours time and send the money off to the school.

If you’d like to help by investing into the lives of these kids please do so through the donation buttons on this page. I’ll close this off around this time tomorrow and announce the final total before getting the money to the school.

Who Else Wants to Change a Child’s Life?

Will You join me in changing the lives of a group of children?

Today I received an email from a good friend that both convicted and inspired me.

My friend (Andrea) is a social worker who works in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne and she told a story of a group of refugee children in a local school who between them had a total of 4 books.

Andrea was emailing a small group of her friends to see if we’d consider donating a book or two for these kids.

You can read part of her email below – but as I read it I felt really strongly that I’d like to help – both by personally donating some books but also by utilizing my own network to help meet this need.

If you’d like to help give these kids some books I’d love to collect your donations and pass it on to Andrea who sent me the email below.

If you’d like to make a donation (big or small) do so via the donate button below (or via this link) in the next 7 days. I’ve put a time limit on it to help me manage collecting it all up and sending it off all in one go.

The Need – an Email from Andrea

Here’s the email (I’ve edited it slightly (mainly names) for reasons of privacy):

“This is a story from a family who access a XXXX Primary School. The school services the local high rise estate, and has 85 students, 82 of whom are refugees from the Horn of Africa.

The grade 1/2s were asked to bring in their favourite book from home, three children brought in books.

• one brought a book that had been donated by Readings (a local bookstore), as he had been involved in a program they support that is run by the Brotherhood;
• another brought in a nursery rhymes book with scribble on every page;
• and another brought in an animal encyclopaedia that had only two pages left in it.
• Then the grade 2/3 teacher said that one of her students brought in a book he had received free in his cereal and asked if it could be kept at school because it would get wrecked at home (he has 5 siblings and lives in a housing commission flat).

Lets Help These Kids

I think we can help these kids to have a better choice for their ‘favourite’ book. All kids need books – I can’t believe how many I have at home!”

As I read Andrea’s email my thoughts immediately went to the basket of books that lives in the corner of our livingroom. It’s a basket where 40-50 of my children’s books live. It’s a basket that brings a lot of joy to the lives of my boys and which I can see is helping them to learn about language, literacy, numeracy and life.

My boys have more books than they can read - I felt convicted that these kids that live just a few kilometers from me say their favorite book is something they got from a cereal packet.

Andrea then went on in her email to ask us to consider donating a book so that she could collect them all up and get them into the hands of these kids.

I’d like to go one better than just donating books of my own – I wanted to share this story here via my blog and social media to put the call out to my network.

Andrea wants to send each child in that grade home with 3 new books. I think we can do better and go a long way to doing it for the whole school.

If you’d like to help impact this small school community in this way you can make a donation via this paypal button. I’ll ensure every cent is passed on to Andrea and that those kids get their books.

Pass it On

If you’re not in a position to donate – please consider passing on word of this to your network via your blog, Twitter, other social networking, email or word of mouth. Thanks for those who are already spreading this.

Update

I will periodically be updating this post with the total donated. It won’t be up to the minute but I’ll attempt to keep a fairly up to date total.

So far the total donated is $1320.40 USD – thanks everyone who has donated so far!