Thank you so much for supporting our Books Forever Appeal this year.

We have received an outstanding response to our Appeal, with our incredible supporters donating over 8,000 new books for local children! Your book donations will be distributed at our Book Roadshow events in Manchester and Salford schools – it’s enough to supply pupils in over 50 classes with books to take home! To receive 8,000 new books means we have a fantastic supply of new books to see us through the coming months.

At our Book Roadshows we take both new and good quality second hand children’s books into the school, and it’s great to have a good variety of new titles and pre-loved. Each child can choose five books to take home and keep for free.

In 2022 we distributed over 20,500 books, and this year we’ve already held six Roadshows for different schools, with more to come later this year. Our Roadshows aim to overcome the barriers to reading that children living in low-income families face. In turn, this can improve their literacy skills, as well as developing a real love of reading, that we hope will last a lifetime.

It’s no easy task, however – the National Literacy Trust has found that one in five children in the UK don’t have any books to read at home.

At our Book Roadshows, it’s always fantastic to see how enthusiastic children are to read when given the chance:

“Finally, I have some books to read at home!”, one student told us after choosing their books.

Another told us “now I have a goal to read more books and get better at reading!”

We know that some of our supporters are still collecting books for us, and we have been so grateful to receive donations from so many companies, local independent bookshops, children’s authors, groups in the community, schools and individuals. With another four Book Roadshows planned in 2023, we are still in need of books and we would be delighted to receive new and good quality second hand books all year round.

Books are also available to families attending our Family Basics project, and we also install and supply books for community bookshelves in the local area.

We couldn’t run our Books Forever project without the kind donations from our supporters – your help makes a real difference to the lives of children in our community.

If you’d like to know more about our Books Forever project, or any of our work here at Wood Street Mission, please contact fundraise@woodstreetmission.org.uk.