The gift of literacy at an uncertain time...

Morning! I hope you’re well and finding ways to cope in this strange and uncertain time? Lockdown is undeniably hard for everyone but especially hard, I think for the most vulnerable families and their children. We’ve helped in previous weeks getting food in their bellies as so often when they’ve not been able to get a healthy school meal there’s been nothing close to filling that void and this week’s nomination by Gwen Gorst targets getting these kids access to books to improve their literacy and imagination during this time. It’s proven to bring families closer together by reading together and help kids that are already finding school tough from falling further behind and help to reinforce learning at home as studies have proved when children from the most vulnerable families fall behind it’s much harder to get them back on track. So alongside the charities that have been organising deliveries of lunches to these children they will also be able to deliver books to help them flourish at school. We think this is a super initiative. Thanks Gwen!

Hi, I’d like to nominate ‘Stories at Home’ what they are trying to do is get books out to the most disadvantaged families in Bristol through the Foodbanks and Food Clubs. The books have to be brand new as they didn’t want to risk the spread of the virus.  So they are using the existing channels that are available.  The books that they have been giving out today came from two sources one a Charity called Read For Good and then another Raintree Publishers who very kindly gifted the books. You can imagine there are 1000s of children that would benefit from this and publishers are getting behind this initiative by providing books at extremely low prices to be able to provide as many of these vulnerable families with books to reaffirm good learning in the home and stop these young people from falling behind when they return to school. A cycle that’s very tough to stop.What do you think ? Can you support at all ?Cheers, Gwen x