While ECBC has been delivering Read+Think+Thrive (RTT) boxes to kids newly diagnosed with cancer at CHOC for some time, these deliveries have occurred sporadically and informally when ECBC happens to hear about a new diagnosis through other cancer nonprofits, others in the cancer community, or friends and community people who ask for a box for someone they know/love. Up until now, we have had a difficult time securing a point person at the hospital to communicate new diagnoses and deliver boxes — so it has been impossible for us to reach all patients, or even most of them. We now finally have an awesome CHOC staff from the Child Life Department who is excited to help us make this program a success at CHOC. With these first two boxes (both delivered to teenagers), ECBC will now learn about every child diagnosed with cancer at CHOC, from infant through teen and young adult, and we will aim to promptly deliver the boxes to the hospital while the child is still inpatient for his/her initial hospital stay. This is easier said than done, as there are numerous challenges that we are confronted with (e.g., there is currently no space for on-site storage of these boxes, so we will need to keep boxes offsite and deliver them individually as each diagnosis happens) — but we are so excited to get this program going more formally and reach more patients – so that every patient diagnosed with cancer has a fantastic mini-library of new, high-quality books to read!

Now that we will be receiving box requests more regularly and frequently, we could really use more help from kids in the community with these two creative tasks: (1) decorating the book boxes, and (2) completing a Thrive Buddy response (a great way for kids to boost their summer reading). If your child or youth group is interested in helping with either of these, or in supporting our RTT Box program in a larger way, please email ECBC at ali@ECbookclub.com.

Or, if you want to help fund our book box program with a monetary donation, an easy way to do it is through our charity run website. Registrations are now open for BOOK IT #2 (Sept 8, 2019), and/or you can donate $100 to fund a box for a new cancer diagnosis. CLICK HERE to access the site — It’s super easy!