Give a Book is 5 years old!

When Give a Book started, I privately gave us 5 years to find out if we had legs. Five years on, we work in places where there’s a real need to help spread a love of reading – in prisons and with disadvantaged children.

Over these 5 years we have acquired skills and gained from our collaboration with established partners such as The Reading Agency, Prison Reading Groups, First Story & Magic Breakfast and look forward to new collaborations – with the police, Dolly Parton’s Dollywood Foundation and smaller one woman bands such as Street Reads. We’ve also learnt immeasurably from the people we serve, whether it’s the child who comes to school with only one or two words, or the 39 year old man who has just learnt to read in prison.

We have active and dedicated trustees, a fine advisory board, and a great working team under our wonderful Director of Projects, Adeela Khan. Recently we welcomed Sophia Morris-Jones and will be sad to say goodbye to the incomparable Anthony Wilks who’s given us our brilliant web presence from the start. We are all united in our passion for sharing the pleasure of reading. Thank you to all our generous supporters–we couldn’t do it without you.

Here are some numbers from our first five years:

• 20,000+ dictionaries to prisoners
• 1500+ book bags given out at Family Days
• 5000+ books given to school book clubs
• 6000+ books given to First Story students
• 19 Magic Breakfast Book Clubs set up
• Books given to over 40 Prison Reading Groups across 35 prisons
• 2000+ books sent to custody suites
• 1000+ books to Maggie’s Centres
• 500+ books given to school projects around the UK