2023 was productive and impactful for ECBC! We gave away a total of 5816 new books to CHOC Children’s Hospital patients across our various inpatient and outpatient book gifting programs, averaging approximately 500 books per month. And our incredible group of bedside reader volunteers delivered 500+ private read-aloud sessions at patients’ bedside — these interactive sessions target literacy skills, complex thinking, and are often kids’ only non-medical related conversations of the day. We also brought our annual fundraiser, BOOK IT Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids, back to an in-person event for the first time since before Covid, with approximately 550 participants/volunteers and raising more than $40,000 in profit (just about equal to our current program expenses). THANK YOU to our amazing community for supporting ECBC — every monetary donation, book donation, book drive,  “runner for reading”, and social media shout-out has mattered and allows ECBC to keep on going. And a special thank you to ECBC’s small but mighty Board of Directors — Susie Alexander, Anne Case, Mary Kay Viscounty, and Dr. Van Huynh — I am so deeply grateful for the commitment and contributions of each of you. 

Going forward in 2024, ECBC is moving into its 9th year of book and reading programs at CHOC. This year, ECBC plans to continue to promote hospitalized kids’ cognitive health and thrivership by: 

• GROWING our inpatient reading program to more expert reader volunteers, more days per week, more patient floors, and greater impact on kids’ thrivership during their hospital stays. We hope to move closer to our ultimate goal of offering reading to patients daily, consistent with decades of research that shows the benefits of reading aloud at least fifteen minutes per day.
• SUSTAINING our high levels of book donations across our various book gifting programs — including our gifting libraries at CHOC’s Oncology Clinic and Outpateint Infusion Center so that every child visiting the clinic or OPI can select a high-quality book to keep; our holiday book gifting such as BOO-ks for Treats on Halloween and our December holiday book gifting; our book gifting to patients in isolation via our mobile library cart; and our Read Think Thrive (RTT) Bags for patients as they are diagnosed with cancer (valued at $150/bag). We hope to someday be able to expand beyond CHOC to provide our RTT Bags to additional kids who are diagnosed with cancer — though this is a more distant goal given the significant additional funds and storage space that would be required for more inventory. Sustaining means continued monetary and book support to continue to meet our hefty book gifting numbers of approximately 5000 books ($5000) per month. 
• RECRUITING more members to join Teens Thrive Reading Group (TTRG), our virtual book club for teen and young adult cancer warriors that includes gifting Kindles, monthly books, and curated book discussion by ECBC co-founder Ethan. As this is a virtual program that is not hospital or storage space dependent, this year we hope to expand TTRG beyond CHOC to include oncology teens from around the country. 
• EXPANDING our impact by providing parents with resources to help them optimally support their kids’ cognitive health through treatment with books and reading. The hope is that this can include online methods as well as eventual in-person group sessions with parents during hospital stays.
• OBTAINING office/storage space! We have spent the past 7+ years with a small offsite storage unit and using our founder’s house as the main source of our storage (the hospital has very little storage space). As we grow our organization, we are in great need of a single space for book storage, book delivery and processing, and our volunteer activities (like filling the canvas bags for new diagnoses or sorting/stamping the hundreds of books that we gift each month). This is a huge and organizational-changing goal for ECBC that requires an additional $2000 per month to make happen. As such, we are looking for champions of ECBC’s mission who are willing to commit to a recurring monthly donation so that we can afford to make this leap and then sustain the increased operating costs. We’re hopeful that we can make this happen in 2024!

To commit to a recurring donation and become an ECBC GEM (Give Every Month), please CLICK BELOW. Select your desired level of support or enter your own amount, and check the “Make this a monthly donation” box. 

Thank you for helping ECBC help Orange County’s hospitalized kids to thrive with high-quality books and reading experiences! ECBC is a public-benefit non-profit corporation, EIN 83-2934289.