Member Article

Business donates £1,000 worth of books to local schools

Ablaze Bristol, an independent charity tackling inequality of opportunity for young people in the West of England, was approached by a local engineering consultancy which wanted to support children during the pandemic.

SD Solution made a generous £1,000 donation to Ablaze for the charity to buy books and distribute these to the charity’s 20 partner schools, thus reaching hundreds of primary school children. Most of these schools are based in areas of Bristol where literacy levels are below the national average and where reading is a key focus area for the pupils.

Katherine Archer, Marketing Coordinator at SD Solution, said: “As a Bristol business, we are committed to supporting our local community. We are proud to be a net carbon zero in operation business with 1% of our turnover donated to community and wellbeing projects. Many of our team members are STEM ambassadors and are passionate about supporting young people with the necessary skills for this exciting and growing sector. We are delighted to support the Ablaze literacy and numeracy scheme and pleased that our donation is going towards such a fantastic cause”

Ablaze decided to buy the books via two local bookshops and asked them for book suggestions based on topics related to the challenges that children have gone through since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Sam Taylor, Co-Founder of Max Minerva, commented: “We’re thrilled to be able to give back to our community in any way we can, and this was a fantastic opportunity to provide books to schools across Bristol through Ablaze. It’s great to support the charity in its quest to get kids reading.”

Tom Robinson, Owner of Gloucester Rd Books, added: “I’m absolutely delighted to be supporting Ablaze Bristol in its efforts to get more books into schools. Encouraging children to read and learn to love reading is incredibly important, and we are very lucky to have Ablaze doing the work it does in our city.”

Catherine Correia, Primary Project Manager at Ablaze Bristol, said: “We are so grateful to SD Solution for this kind donation. It’s been a fantastic way to re-engage with all our partner schools and bring some joy to the children. The response from the schools has been unanimously positive, with many teachers saying the titles are perfect to read and discuss in class, allowing children to talk about their mixed emotions and understand how we can still connect with one another despite being physically apart. Many school libraries were in need of some new books and we know many school libraries were in need of new books so we hope that teachers and pupils will be enjoying these for many years to come.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ablaze .