If you haven’t yet supported ECBC’s Virtual Book Drive, please consider donating on this final day by going to runsignup.com/BOOKIT2020 and giving an amount equivalent to what you would have spent if you had participated in our in-person event ($40 for one registration, $160 for a family of four). To donate a book directly from ECBC’s Amazon Wish list, CLICK HERE. Here’s why we need your help so badly, especially now:
- To fund our Covid-modified programs, which are costlier than pre-Covid. These include Book Bags for all new cancer diagnoses (finally, every kid!); book deliveries using our new Cool Cart at the Outpatient Infusion Center for every child coming in for an infusion (~!50 per 1-2 weeks, compared to pre-Covid 100 books/month); a virtual book club for teen cancer patients including a Kindle and monthly e-books (brand new); upcoming Halloween book deliveries for all patients (room deliveries compared to pre-Covid when patients trick-or-treated at our booth). Whereas bedside reading was the backbone of ECBC’s programming pre-Covid and was relatively cheap to run, a shift to 100% gifting is significantly more costly.
- To sustain our other ongoing inpatient programs as soon as we are given the green light.
- To help offset the significant loss of incoming books. We have significantly fewer books coming in due to the lack of onsite book drives and book fairs happening in schools and by philanthropic groups, which in the past have provided the majority of our gifting books.
- To keep us going until BOOK IT 2021, when we will hopefully be able to host our in-person charity run and book drive again!
We have raised just over 2/3 of our fundraising goal, which is awesome but not enough. Every donation makes a huge difference in our ability to keep on going with our mission to help hospitalized kids thrive with books and reading!
For the month of September, I have been sharing a specific way that ECBC helps kids thrive though treatment — as a way to complete our BOOK IT campaign and also as a way to honor Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. To conclude our “30 Ways”, Way #30 is that we hope that ECBC and Ethan’s story might be a model (along with many other kid-driven efforts out there) for patient-driven innovation and change-making. For Ethan, “doing ECBC” gave Ethan purpose and helped to turn an incredibly difficult time into something positive — it helped him to not just survive cancer but thrive through and after it. We hope that his story might inspire other hospitalized kids to find their own way, no matter how small, to step up/speak out/innovate/give back that is personal, meaningful, and contributes to their own thrivership through hardship!
