This World Book Day, The Book Bus is re-launching our successful “I’m a Reader” programme. We’re asking for your help to create 10,000 child readers by 2022.

2022 update: Following our successful campaign in 2021, The Book Bus launched a campaign to send a further 10,000 books to children in Zambia. You can donate to our 2022 JustGiving campaign here. The JustGiving links in this post have been amended to point to the 2022 campaign.

Update: On April 15th 2021, The Book Bus hit our goal of £1,500 on JustGiving. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed! Your kind donations will support our goal of sending books for over 3,200 children in Kitwe. If you would like to support The Book Bus, you can continue to do so via our Donate page.

Today is a World Book Day like no other. In March 2020, The Covid-19 pandemic forced 165 countries to close schools, impacting nearly 1.5 billion learners. For children already facing substantial barriers to a literary education, the school closures risked making the attainment gap even bigger. Now, as much as ever, there is an urgent need to provide greater opportunities to children in Zambia and beyond.

This is why The Book Bus is re-opening our highly successful “I Am a Reader” programme in Zambia. The highly successful programme is aimed at primary schoolchildren and has previously created 10,000 child readers in a four-year period. We were forced to pause the programme due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On World Book Day, we’re excited to announce the return of the I Am a Reader programme, with the aim of creating another 10,000 child readers by 2022.

Help us create another 10,000 child readers in 2022

The I Am a Reader programme relies on quality books that are donated in the UK, before being shipped to Zambia. There they are distributed by The Book Bus team to reading corners and libraries. In 2020, we sent over 10,000 books to Kitwe, Zambia, and are aiming to do the same in 2021.

It will cost The Book Bus £1,500 to collect and distribute these precious learning resource to 20 schools in Kitwe. This is why The Book Bus is today launching a JustGiving campaign to raise £1,500, with the goal of sharing the joy of reading with even more children in Zambia.

Thanks to previous support from our incredibly wide support base, 10,000 children already have access to a fabulous range of books on this World Book Day. With ongoing support from you and your fellow Book Bus supporters, another 10,000 children will be able to enjoy the pleasure of reading by 2022. Click here to donate to the campaign, helping The Book Bus reach even more children in 2021.