Over the past couple of years, gbpartnerships foundation has proudly supported Own Books, an innovative book recycling project that helps children have their own books at home. Warwickshire based Own Books was established by Julie de Bastion in 2014, who was concerned to find that many children did not have books at home to read.
Julie reached out to gbp foundation for support for her most recent project, ‘Poet Tree’, that she established during lockdown to encourage children to write poems about their feelings and imaginings.
A young, shortlisted poet laureate for Warwickshire, Grace Ridley, is managing the Poet Tree project and conducting online live webinar workshops in several schools - the beautiful, heartfelt poems are now pouring in.
Julie commented:
With the kind donation from gbpartnerships foundation, we will be able to publish an anthology of the children’s work (totalling 101 poems) together with their illustrations and provide printed copies of the book - entitled Poet Tree - free to each child who is include in the publication. We also plan to launch an online platform for all the remaining poems that don’t make it into print.
Plans are now coming together to publish Poet Tree in early 2022, and with the funding from gbp foundation, printed copies will be able to be provided free of charge to all of the children who have participated in the project.
Find out more about Own Books and donate by clicking here.
