First Book
Organization background

First Book is an international non-profit social enterprise organization that provides children in need with access to the highest quality books and educational materials. They have a sustainable highly cost-effective solution, the First Book marketplace, that provides access to books and educational resources to a disenfranchised group of educational institutions at the bottom of the economic pyramid. First Book negotiates with various book publishers to procure books at low rates and makes those books available to schools and community-based organizations that register on the First Book Marketplace. Since 1992, First Book has distributed more than 100 million new, high-quality books and educational resources to benefit low-income children across the USA and Canada.

Project background

Nationally, there is a 60 percent difference in school preparedness between children from middle and lower income families prior to kindergarten. Research points to a lack of access to reading materials as a central obstacle. In some of the lowest income neighbourhoods of the country, there is only one book available for every 300 children.

A large percentage of the children in Los Angeles, and New York City and surrounding suburbs are estimated to live in low-income households. Getting low-income children upto proficient reading levels is one of the best tools that they can be given to achieve success later in life.

The FirstBook Marketplace is a software platform where books and non-book resources are made available to educators from lower income neighbourhoods. The prices of these items are often highly subsidized by the publishers and other suppliers, however, impoverished schools still don't have the resources to buy them. In this situation, donors such as GKF step up and provide resources to pay for these items.

GKF contributons to FB