In March Stoke Reads donated over 10,000 books to various charities and organisations across the Stoke-on-Trent. This was made up of 2,500 of Stoke Reads’ books and a further 10,000 kindly gifted by longstanding partner of the hub, Harper Collins.
To help distribute the books, Stoke Reads teamed up with seven incredible volunteers from Keele University who worked extremely hard to pack and distribute the books across the city. You can find out how they got on by watching this video they have created about the day.
In total, 12,500 books were donated to the following organisations:
| Port Vale | BID | Opendoor |
| Hubb Foundation | Chell Association | Gingerbread |
| Stoke City | Walk and Talk | Helping Angels |
| Realise | Middleport Matters | Catherine Court |
| YMCA | Chell Food Pantry | Eurturia and Shelton Matters |
| Stoke Libraries | ASHA | New Era |
| Ruff and Ruby | Glow | West End Centre |
| Savana | The Discovery Accademy |
The organisations have provided excellent feedback so far and are looking forward to sharing the books with the families they support.
A representative from Ruff and Ruby said: “Thank you so much for these amazing books! A lot of them will go to our TLC packages. These are for young people who are really struggling at the moment and most have been referred to us by schools. These include lots of treats to help the young people feel valued and better about themselves. These books will form such a big part of these. Books help young people to keep their minds alert in this difficult time and takes them away from where they are. There really is nothing better than getting lot in a book. This donation really means a lot to us.”
Realise Foundation hopes that the books will help improve community engagement with reading through use of their newly installed library.
“We have recently had a new library installed to help encourage the children to read and, given the cost implications of Covid-19 on the school, we are struggling to fill it! Your donation could not have come at a better time and we are most grateful. We have kept a couple of books back as incentives/prizes for the children but the lion share have been catalogued and put in our library with stickers showing that they were kindly donated by The Realise charity.”
Stoke City have also begun successfully sharing books with young children across the city and one parent said: “My son Dylan has been fortunate enough to receive books which were provided to his school by Stoke City Community Trust and the National Literacy Trust. Dylan enjoys reading and has done more and more of it over lockdown so to have new books for him to read is fantastic because it allows him to stay motivated with his reading”
Publisher HarperCollins supports Stoke Reads as part of their Literacy Project. The Literacy Project encourages and challenges the publishing industry to use its unique assets within local communities to drive engagement in reading and increase literacy and related skills. So far in Stoke-on-Trent this has taken the form of generous book donations, author ambassadors, volunteer activity and school programmes.