Booktrust campaign to raise 2m to get 12,000 disadvantaged children reading
Katy Morton
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The charity Booktrust has launched a new fundraising drive to help the UK's most vulnerable children through the power of stories and reading.
Over the next three years, the Children’s Reading fund aims to raise £2m to give vulnerable children across the country better access to books. This will include those in care, those with additional needs and those who are socially or economically disadvantaged.
Led by the charity Booktrust, the fund will support 12,000 children aged between four and 11, using books, e-books, CDs, games and performance to inspire them to engage more with reading and writing to ‘change their own story’.
Founding partners James Patterson and bookseller Waterstones, along with the Duchess of Cornwall, a patron of Booktrust, are backing the fund, as well as Random House publishers and TV presenters Dan Snow and Gaby Roslin, and Random House book publishers.
The Children’s Reading Fund is intended to build upon Booktrust’s existing programmes, which according to the charity have helped thousands of children under the age of four in the UK.
The Duchess of Cornwall said, ‘It’s hard to imagine a childhood without books. A world where Alice doesn’t go to Wonderland, where Charlie doesn’t visit the chocolate factory and where Harry Potter never discovers the magic of Hogwarts. Sadly, there are too many children in our country who have not been given the chance to discover the exciting new worlds books can open up, and having loved books all my life I feel passionately that I want others to share that passion too.
‘That is why I am proud to be the patron of Booktrust and to support their new Children’s Reading Fund. The fund will help bring the gift of reading to disadvantaged children across the country. It will help all those children to experience the joy that stories can bring and perhaps even give them a chance to change their own stories.’
Led by the charity Booktrust, the fund will support 12,000 children aged between four and 11, using books, e-books, CDs, games and performance to inspire them to engage more with reading and writing to ‘change their own story’.
Founding partners James Patterson and bookseller Waterstones, along with the Duchess of Cornwall, a patron of Booktrust, are backing the fund, as well as Random House publishers and TV presenters Dan Snow and Gaby Roslin, and Random House book publishers.
The Children’s Reading Fund is intended to build upon Booktrust’s existing programmes, which according to the charity have helped thousands of children under the age of four in the UK.
The Duchess of Cornwall said, ‘It’s hard to imagine a childhood without books. A world where Alice doesn’t go to Wonderland, where Charlie doesn’t visit the chocolate factory and where Harry Potter never discovers the magic of Hogwarts. Sadly, there are too many children in our country who have not been given the chance to discover the exciting new worlds books can open up, and having loved books all my life I feel passionately that I want others to share that passion too.
‘That is why I am proud to be the patron of Booktrust and to support their new Children’s Reading Fund. The fund will help bring the gift of reading to disadvantaged children across the country. It will help all those children to experience the joy that stories can bring and perhaps even give them a chance to change their own stories.’
