$1 can lead to 1 million books for kids in need this holiday season
We take the ability to curl up with a good story for granted. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to books. For the 32 million American children growing up in low-income families, books are rare. In one low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C., there is approximately one book for every 800 children. But children need books in…
We take the ability to curl up with a good story for granted. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to books. For the 32 million American children growing up in low-income families, books are rare. In one low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C., there is approximately one book for every 800 children. But children need books in their lives in order to do well in school and in life. Half of students from low-income backgrounds start first grade up to two years behind other students. If a child is a poor reader at the end of first grade, there’s a 90% chance they’re going to be a poor reader at the end of fourth grade.
In order to help close the literacy gap, First Book launched Give a Million, a Giving Tuesday campaign to put one million new, high-quality books in the hands of children. Since 1992, the nonprofit has distributed over 185 million books and educational resources, a value of more than $1.5 billion. Many educators lack the basic educational necessities in their classrooms, and First Book helps provide these basic needs items.
The aptly named Give a Million campaign aims to raise $1 million between now and December 6. So far, more than $125,000 has been raised thanks to donations from award-winning authors and their foundations, including The Mo and Cher Willems Foundation, Alane Adams and her Rise Up Foundation, and Marissa Meyer.
The gift of a book is a little that goes a long way. “Bringing new books to kids in need has an immeasurable impact, and for many kids, it will be the first book they have ever owned, or the only gift they will receive during the holidays,” said Kyle Zimmer, president, CEO, and co-founder of First Book.
First Book believes books offer children in need the best path out of poverty. “The sense of self-esteem that comes with that is worth far more than $1 million, and the fact that it also furthers their academic possibilities makes the gift of a book invaluable. This is an easy ask — grant a wish and give a child a future of possibility,” Zimmer said.
What children read now can last a lifetime. When students have more books at home, they’re more likely to have higher reading scores at school. Not only that, children who choose what they read and are allowed to read in an informal environment have more of an appetite for reading. They also have greater literacy and language development. Allowing children to read as they please by giving them books plants a seed in their young minds, allowing them to blossom as they grow.
First Book is collecting donations for Give a Million via their website. You can click here to donate.
UPDATE: First Book’s Give a Million campaign ended a few days after Giving Tuesday, and they are proud to have raised over $200,000 with the help of generous authors and supporters like you. Though they’re shy of their ambitious goal, they’re still confident that with the support of book lovers across the nation, they can provide a million books to kids who need them. Thanks to a generous donation match by their partners, Penguin Random House, every gift made to First Book through 12/31 has double the impact. Every $3 = 2 books to kids in need! Click here to find out how to Take Action for literacy with First Book and make a matched donation today.
This article is sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers.
In a small village in Pwani, a district on Tanzania’s coast, a massive dance party is coming to a close. For the past two hours, locals have paraded through the village streets, singing and beating ngombe drums; now, in a large clearing, a woman named Sheilla motions for everyone to sit facing a large projector screen. A film premiere is about to begin.
It’s an unusual way to kick off a film about gender bias, inequality, early marriage, and other barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in Tanzania. But in Pwani and beyond, local organizations supported by Malala Fund and funded by Pura are finding creative, culturally relevant ways like this one to capture people’s interest.
The film ends and Sheilla, the Communications and Partnership Lead for Media for Development and Advocacy (MEDEA), stands in front of the crowd once again, asking the audience to reflect: What did you think about the film? How did it relate to your own experience? What can we learn?
Sheilla explains that, once the community sees the film, “It brings out conversations within themselves, reflective conversations.” The resonance and immediate action create a ripple effect of change.
MEDEA Screening Audience in Tanzania. Captured by James Roh for Pura
Across Tanzania, gender-based violence often forces adolescent girls out of the classroom. This and other barriers — including child marriage, poverty, conflict, and discrimination — prevent girls from completing their education around the world.
Sheilla and her team are using film and radio programs to address the challenges girls face in their communities. MEDEA’s ultimate goal is to affirm education as a fundamental right for everyone, and to ensure that every member of a community understands how girls’ education contributes to a stronger whole and how to be an ally for their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, friends, nieces, and girlfriends.
Sheilla’s story is one of many that inspired Heart on Fire, a new fragrance from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection that blends the warm, earthy spices of Tanzania with a playful, joyful twist. Here’s how Pura is using scent as a tool to connect the world and inspire action.
A partnership focused on local impact, on a global mission
Pura, a fragrance company that recognizes education as both freedom and a human right, has partnered with Malala Fund since 2022. In order to defend every girl’s right to access and complete 12 years of education, Malala Fund partners with local organizations in countries where the educational barriers are the greatest. They invest in locally-led solutions because they know that those who are closest to the problems are best equipped to solve and build durable solutions, like MEDEA, which works with communities to challenge discrimination against girls and change beliefs about their education.
But local initiatives can thrive and scale more powerfully with global support, which is why Pura is using their own superpower, the power of scent, to connect people around the world with the women and girls in these local communities.
The Pura x Malala Fund Collection incorporates ingredients naturally found in Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil: countries where Malala Fund operates to address systemic education barriers. Eight percent of net revenue from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection will be donated to Malala Fund directly, but beyond financial support, the Collection is also a love letter to each unique community, blending notes like lemon, jasmine, cedarwood, and clove to transport people, ignite their senses, and help them draw inspiration and hope from the global movement for girls’ education. Through scent, people can connect to the courage, joy, and tenacity of girls and local leaders, all while uniting in a shared commitment to education: the belief that supporting girls’ rights in one community benefits all of us, everywhere.
You’ve already met Sheilla. Now see how Naiara and Mama Habiba are building unique solutions to ensure every girl can learn freely and dare to dream.
Naiara Leite is reimagining what’s possible in Brazil
Julia with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
In Brazil, where pear trees and coconut plantations cover the Northeastern Coast, girls like ten-year-old Julia experience a different kind of educational barrier than girls in Tanzania. Too often, racial discrimination contributes to high dropout rates among Black, quilombola and Indigenous girls in the country.
“In the logic of Brazilian society, Black people don’t need to study,” says Naiara Leite, Executive Coordinator of Odara, a women-led organization and Malala Fund partner. Bahia, the state where Odara is based, was once one of the largest slave-receiving territories in the Americas, and because of that history, deeply-ingrained, anti-Black prejudice is still widespread. “Our role and the image constructed around us is one of manual labor,” Naiara says.
But education can change that. In 2020, with assistance from a Malala Fund grant, Odara launched its first initiative for improving school completion rates among Black, quilombola, and Indigenous girls: “Ayomidê Odara”. The young girls mentored under the program, including Julia, are known as the Ayomidês. And like the Pura x Malala Fund Collection’s Brazil: Breath of Courage scent, the Ayomidês are fierce, determined, and bursting with energy.
Ayomidês with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
Ayomidês take part in weekly educational sessions where they explore subjects like education and ethnic-racial relations. The girls are encouraged to find their own voices by producing Instagram lives, social media videos, and by participating in public panels. Already, the Ayomidês are rewriting the narrative on what’s possible for Afro-Brazilian girls to achieve. One of the earliest Ayomidês, a young woman named Debora, is now a communications intern. Another former Ayomidê, Francine, works at UNICEF, helping train the next generation of adolescent leaders. And Julia has already set her sights on becoming a math teacher or a model.
“These are generations of Black women who did not have access to a school,” Naiara says. “These are generations of Black women robbed daily of their dreams. And we’re telling them that they could be the generation in their family to write a new story.”
Mama Habiba is reframing the conversation in Nigeria
Centre for Girls' Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
In Mama Habiba’s home country of Nigeria, the scents of starfruit, ylang ylang and pineapple, all incorporated into the Pura x Malala Collection’s “Nigeria: Hope for Tomorrow,” can be found throughout the vibrant markets. Like these native scents, Mama Habiba says that the Nigerian girls are also bright and passionate, but too often they are forced to leave school long before their potential fully blooms.
“Some of these schools are very far, and there is an issue of quality, too,” Mama Habiba says. “Most parents find out when their children are in school, the girls are not learning. So why allow them to continue?”
When girls drop out of secondary school, marriage is often the alternative. In Nigeria, one in three girls is married before the age of 18. When this happens, girls are unable to fulfill their potential, and their families and communities lose out on the social, health and economic benefits.
Completing secondary school delays marriage, and according to UNESCO, educated girls become women who raise healthier children, lift their families out of poverty and contribute to more peaceful, resilient communities.
Centre for Girls’ Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
To encourage young girls to stay in school, the Centre for Girls’ Education, a nonprofit in Nigeria founded by Mama Habiba and supported by Malala Fund and Pura, has pioneered an initiative that’s similar to the Ayomidê workshops in Brazil: safe spaces. Here, girls meet regularly to learn literacy, numeracy, and other issues like reproductive health. These safe spaces also provide an opportunity for the girls to role-play and learn to advocate for themselves, develop their self-image, and practice conversations with others about their values, education being one of them. In safe spaces, Mama Habiba says, girls start to understand “who she is, and that she is a girl who has value. She has the right to negotiate with her parents on what she really feels or wants.”
“When girls are educated, they can unlock so many opportunities,” Mama Habiba says. “It will help the economy of the country. It will boost so many opportunities for the country. If they are given the opportunity, I think the sky is not the limit. It is the starting point for every girl.”
From parades, film screenings to safe spaces and educational programs, girls and local leaders are working hard to strengthen the quality, safety and accessibility of education and overcome systemic challenges. They are encouraging courageous behavior and reminding us all that education is freedom.
Experience the Pura x Malala Fund Collection here, and connect with the stories of real girls leading change across the globe.
April McNary, a teacher at Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, Arizona, has always believed in the transformative power of reading and writing. The honest conversations that are sparked by this creative work, she says, are some of the most valuable to her. “Allowing students to wrestle with their thoughts and convictions is something that happens…
April McNary, a teacher at Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, Arizona, has always believed in the transformative power of reading and writing. The honest conversations that are sparked by this creative work, she says, are some of the most valuable to her.
“Allowing students to wrestle with their thoughts and convictions is something that happens on a regular basis, and it’s one of the parts I love most about my career choice,” says McNary.
While learning from great written works like Shakespeare is always on the agenda, McNary also makes a point of giving her students space to write and reflect on pressing issues that affect them directly — like gun violence. After the Parkland shooting happened, she gave her students time to do just that, then discuss what they wrote in small groups. Allowing the students space to express their feelings helped everyone feel better and get on with the day.
One area of creative expression McNary felt like she needed to boost in her classroom was poetry.
“Knowing that reading one’s own poetry is terrifying for some (and something I still won’t assign), I figured something less daunting was to read a poem someone else had written/published,” she explains.
But she implemented a twist — students had to choose a poem with which they had some sort of personal connection. Little did she know what incredible moments were about to transpire as a result.
One girl came out in front of the class. A boy, who was known as a jock, wept while telling everyone his mother was dying of cancer. Another girl spoke about how her parents had been deported and she had to take up a job to help support herself and her siblings. And another girl couldn’t even finish her poem about being bullied, it affected her so much.
The common thread through all of these incredibly emotional admissions was empathy; the class rallied around each person going through it, applauding, hugging, and weeping right along with them. The act of expressing oneself through another’s words seemed to be the permission they needed to open the floodgates and truly support one another.
One reading in particular, however, hit McNary at her core. A student in her class named Chris* brought in a poem from the novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” that clearly denotes suicidal ideation. But it wasn’t just the context of the poem that concerned her, “it was the way he read it. It’s hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t in the room, but it was as if he was reading like the original writer of such dark thoughts.”
She’d also noticed how he seemed more and more distant in class and in his weekly journal writing. He wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. So, after the class where he presented the poem, McNary reached out to Chris’ mom and expressed her concerns. Sadly, she was immediately receptive because she’d noticed her son’s behavior, too. They made a plan to keep a close eye on him, and check in with the school social worker.
Chris came in the next day and told McNary his mom had spoken to him about their concerns. “I asked him if he was mad at me, and he said no (with tears in his eyes). I think, although he didn’t say it, he was relieved,” she says. He started coming in to talk with her before school about books and other things. One day, later in the year, he told her he’d joined a band. After that he started talking to her and his mom about his dreams and goals. “I think Chris needed to be seen and heard,” says McNary.
Soon enough, he headed off to college, but he didn’t forget about McNary. Eventually, he wrote her an email telling her he was doing well and hoped she was too. “I remember just crying as I read the email a few times. I was beyond relieved and grateful that he had found a place in college, and was positive about his future,” she says.
She was so moved by his message that she decided to write a poem herself about him. She often writes to process emotions, just as she instructs her students.
Since the poetry-reading assignment had done so much good in her own classroom, McNary decided to submit the idea to the nonprofit, First Book, for inclusion in a toolkit they were developing to help educators promote respect and empathy in the classroom.
First Book helps qualifying teachers like McNary get affordable books and supplies for their students, as well as free professional development tools. She heard about the call for submissions for their Respect and Empathy toolkit via an email they’d sent her. She never expected her exercise would be chosen, and was shocked and humbled when she found out.
McNary hopes the exercise will inspire many more students to really see and hear each other and “accept who their peers are at their core.” The point is for students to learn that being vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness, and should be respected as such.
And she has hopes for the teachers who utilize her exercise, too. “I hope they see the value in turning the floor over to their students completely. My hope is for other teachers to sit in the back of the room in awe of their students like I do every year. I also hope that teachers know the power they have to connect kids to one another through experience and poetry.”
*The name has been changed to protect the identity of the individual.
This article is sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers.
