Year of Readers - Fundraising Drive

We’re entering the sixth month of ‘The Year of Readers’, our year long sponsored read-a-thon that’s designed to raising money for literacy charities around the world. If you haven’t heard about the event before
please read our introductory post introductory post, which is full of information about what we’re doing and how we hope to benefit charities by reading in 2009.

Our readers are doing really well flipping pages and raising money offline, but as the sixth month of the year begins I think we could all use a little online fundraising boost. So if you’re passionate about reading please consider donating to one of our readers so they can advance the cause of reading related charities.

There’s a variety of causes for you to pledge your money to:

I’m reading for Room to Read. You can send me a flat rate donation at my Justgiving page.

Peta is raising cash for Book Aid International which benefits all kind of literacy organizations. Why not contribute a few pounds to her cause at her fundraising page.

Sylvia is reading for a couple of Canadian charities CODE and World Literacy of Canada which work to get children and adults in developing countries literacy training and a supply of useful books. Sylvia’s customized the challenge and you can read all about what she’s doing at her Canada Helps fundraising page.

Melanie is reading for a travelling charity - The Public Library on Wheels. If you want to fund their travels pop by her Canada Gives page.

JC is one of several readers collecting money for First Book, which asks you to remember the joy you felt when you read your own first book. Her fundraising page could use some love.

You can also click through any of the links in the right hand side bar to leave a comment for one of our readers about sponsoring them.

You can help by donating money to one of our readers or by passing on information about ‘The Year of Readers’ to anyone who might be interested in donating. Tweet it, Facebook it or Blog it – however you choose to pass on the message it would be much appreciated.

Finally I’m looking to run a series of silent auctions to increase fundraising. If you have any really cool good quality book related things and would be willing to see them auctioned off for charity please contact me with a comment here. It could be signed copies, ARCs, boxed sets or fancy book paraphernalia. Also if you know anyone who might be interested in donating items please tell them to get in contact here.

New Developments

Just a quick post to give you a short inspirational update. The Year of Readers has now been mentioned at quite a few great places like A Novel Challenge, Estellas Revenge and Blog of a Bookslut , as well as at many independent reader blogs. Checking my site results today I see we've had a few mentions on French blogs so Bonjour! I'm in the process of getting some more exposure for the event at the moment as well as submitting the blog address to search engines and trying to get small presses involved.

I've heard from three of my favourite book bloggers that they will be selecting charities and joining up to raise funds in 2009. Those e-mails were really exciting because I love their blogs and I know big readers means lots of money for worthy causes.

I've picked my charity! I'll be reading for Room to Read, which works on two continents and believes reading is key to breaking the cycle of poverty. I've also started getting my friends to sponsor me and the pennies are rolling in.

Speaking of pennies I've made a (possibly financially ruinous) decision that for every book read by a Year of Reading participant I will personally donate a penny to EcoLibris (donation to be made January 2010). I know environmental 'offsetting' can be a bit tenuous. Readers should focus their efforts on reading secondhand books, borrowed books etc but there's just no use pretending that the trade in virgin paper books is going to disappear. Surely it's better to help plant new trees than to sit around and tut. As the EcoLibris website says:

'Eventually (and hopefully sooner then later), books will be made from recycled paper or other eco-friendly materials. But till then, we can still do something to make the world greener.'

So I'll be asking for book totals at the end of 2009 and each book read will earn an extra penny for EcoLibris, which go towards planting trees. Whatever total we reach I'll round it up to a tree planting amount of dollars.

Finally I'm happy to announce that every month in 2009 I'll be holding a little motivational prize draw for readers here at the blog. All prizes will be designed to enable your reading obsession. Look out for some cool reading paraphenalia.

That's it for now. I hope everyone who has signed up so far has received their sposnorship form (contact me at bakerjodie at googlemail dot com if you haven't). Thanks for spreading the word.