Starting a Charity in Lockdown

September 28, 2020 Emma Lyones 0 Comments life "new normal"

As with many university finalists, I had planned to spend this summer graduating, celebrating with friends, and travelling. Due to the pandemic, I was left twiddling my thumbs and hunting for any form of employment. When Arnav Rawat posted a message on a group chat between university friends, with his idea to start up a charitable organisation that improves book donation to underprivileged students, I jumped at the opportunity.

Arnav had got this idea whilst spring cleaning in lockdown. As he had done, I looked around my room at bookshelves filled with novels, which I was unlikely to read again and textbooks of subjects I had not even studied to GCSE. All books were still in a healthy condition, except the odd scratch, but were simply of no use to me anymore. In June I became second-in-command and secretary of the now-founded Books2All (books2all.co.uk) organisation. Initially, I was motivated by the sheer number of books I had and believed that there were many other individuals with plenty of books gathering dust at home, which would be a major benefit to other students. However, upon further research, I realised how essential a scheme like Books2All is.

1 in 8 schools across England, Wales and Northern Ireland do not own a library, according to The Independent, and these schools are mainly those with a high proportion of students eligible for free school meals. These pupils are less likely to be able to afford extra resources or textbooks at home, subsequently resulting in much reduced opportunities to access books.

Novels and textbooks play an integral part in children’s development and learning, which I have experienced first-hand. Whilst I watched my younger sister stumbling over the words of the Mr Men books, her speech developing daily, I was preparing for A-levels, leafing through textbooks to make sense of concepts I had not grasped in lessons. I thought to myself: thank goodness I have these books! Therefore, I knew that children with limited access to books would be at a major disadvantage. The data collected by Teach First shows that children from underprivileged backgrounds are 18 months behind their peers when they take their GCSEs.

The mission of Books2All is to reduce the educational inequality in the UK with an easy-to-navigate app that links book donors to schools in need. Arnav and I were responsible for recruiting new members and researching the legal proceedings behind starting a charity. For two non-law students, these legalities were particularly challenging: with backgrounds as a biochemist and a chemical engineer, we’d really thrown ourselves in the deep end. Fortunately, we received a lot of praise for the organisation and many individuals eager to join our team. What started out as a group of eight 22 year olds in June 2020 has quickly expanded to a large group of 20 volunteers of different ages with a range of skills and expertise, including some based abroad (thankfully including a group of fully qualified and experienced legal advisors). Our pre-launch website has already gone live and the app is due to launch in Winter 2020.

The app works through donors, who simply sign up, say how far they are willing to travel and scan the barcode of the books they want to donate. Schools can view the books available to them in their local area and select those they require. This efficient approach makes life easier for both donors and schools and ensures that every donated book is used with the maximum impact. We are launching in Greater Manchester and Greater London later this year before hopefully going nationwide in 2021.

If you are a school that would be interested in this scheme or a donor with books to offer, then please visit our website – (books2all.co.uk) for more information. Together, we will reduce educational inequality, one book at a time!