Striving to make access to books and reading a core part of the care that kids receive in the hospital, with the premise that literacy support for children fighting cancer and other life-altering conditions can help promote cognitive health and social connections that are part of thriving through treatment and beyond
With just a couple days left in September and Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (CCAM), we are making a final plea to please support BOOK IT 2024, the annual fundraiser for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club. We have always hosted our annual fundraiser during CCAM because it’s the time of year when cancer-related organizations make a dedicated effort to increase awareness and raise funds for those affected by childhood cancer. Cancer is still the #1 cause of death by disease for children in America. Among those who survive, 3 of 5 kids diagnosed with cancer face significant late-effects of treatment, including long-term neurocognitive effects, which continue to affect survivors’ quality of life for their entire life. ECBC aims to elevate kids’ academic, cognitive, and social thrivership during and long after cancer treatment through our programs that provide high-quality books and reading experiences. We very much need your help to sustain our work! We are currently only at 1/3 of our fundraising goal — which is equivalent to the amount of funds we need annually to run our programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. If you haven’t yet supported our fundraiser, PLEASE helps us by clicking the link below and making a “multiple of 10” donation (in honor of the upcoming 10th anniversary of Ethan’s cancer diagnosis). If you can share the donation site with 10 family or friends, please do so! THANK YOU for your support — we count on our community to be able to continue to make a difference in the lives of hospitalized kids!
A HUGE thank you to our AWESOME community for joining us this past Monday at Ethan & Choco’s Book Club’s (ECBC) 6th annual (3rd in-person) charity run and book drive — BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids! Approximately 400 racers (and nearly 550 total including volunteers, exhibitors, vendors, authors, and booksellers) came to walk, run, fundraise, bookraise, and make our event an amazing success! The net amount of funds raised is still to be determined, but between our event sponsors and online + onsite donations, we exceeded our gross fundraising goal of 50K and collected another few hundred books per the onsite book drive. This will allow us to sustain our current book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital.
In addition to walking or running in our 1K and 5K events, it was fun to see so many supporting our cause in a variety of ways: dressing up as a children’s book character and participating in the Literary Character Costume Contest; visiting author and bookseller booths to purchase books, meet authors, and get autographs; contributing to our book drive by dropping purchased books into our book donation boxes, funding a book on the Handprint Wall, and purchasing raffle tickets; using the photo booth with literary props and receiving printed photos to keep; jumping in the bounce house; having faces painted and cartoon caricatures drawn; receiving fun wearable balloon art; visiting our many exhibitor and vendor booths; enjoying great breakfast and coffee treats from our food trucks; attending storytime on the stage with our authors; and winning great prizes at the culminating book drive raffle drawing. It was so fun to see so much activity and energy going towards our cause, with so many in their BOOK IT! logo shirts and sporting “Run Read Thrive” medals! Congratulations to top 5K finishers (top male finisher Nathan Kneller, top female finisher Lauren Mansy), the winning team “Caleb’s Team”, and all age division winners.
Thank you to Jeffrey Trail Middle School, Irvine Unified School District, and the city of Irvine for providing us with a fantastic location with a beautiful course! Thank you to A5 Events and Ryan Kugler for their expertise in the many layers of permitting the event as well as all aspects of set up and tear down of the exhibit area and course. Thank you to Itz About Time for their seamless professional timing services. Our deepest thank you to the Gerrit and Amy Cole Foundation for stepping up to be our Title Sponsor, and a huge thank you to all of our sponsors: Eisai Inc, Mercer, Jen Schro Catching, 5 Boroughs Book Club, Chapman University, CHOC/Hyundai Cancer Institute, Enderle Center, Paris Family Trust, Sur West Homes, Voit Real Estate, Behr Paint, Blue Buoy, Erin Denes Realtor, Miracles for Kids, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Old Towne Orange Film Festival, Orange Chamber of Commerce, PaKua OC, Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, Selman Chevrolet, The O’Dell Group of Seven Gables, The Printery, Tiddlywinks, and Zov’s. We couldn’t have pulled this off without all of our terrific event sponsors.
Thank you also to everyone who contributed to our AMAZING expo area! To our awesome booksellers — Tiddlywinks Toys and Games, Arvida Book Co, PaperPie — who provided terrific titles to sell at the onsite book drive. And to our children’s authors — Kim Dwinell, Amber Morell, Tootie Nienow, Jennifer Gray Olson, Dan Paley, Chris Robertson, Susie Schaefer, Kristine Sheleritis, and Kathleen Troy — who sold signed copies of their books and also provided an engaging storytime on the stage. Thank you to all of our exhibitors, vendors, Kids Korner vendors, and food trucks who made the expo area fun and interesting: CHOC Children’s Hospital, Miracles for Kids, MaxLove Project, PaKua OC Martial Arts OC, OC Children’s Book Festival, Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Mom & Pop Shop Popsicles, Daisy Chains, Fully Body Pilates, AKT Tustin, OC Bouncers, Creative Parties for Kids, Annie Banannie, Creative Phototime, Crepes Bonaparte, The Lime Truck, and Carmen’s Coffee. And thank you to the following raffle prizes donors: Zov’s, Kristin Chahbazian, Cirkel Fitness, Sharon & Tod Paris, In-n-Out, Laguna Handbags, TIddlywinks, Irvine Regional Park, The Potting Shed, Rock & Brews, Coast Hardware, Centro/Storico, Patti Wilkins, Trader Joes, Hands On Wellness Center, Nektar, and Studio 17. The 32 awesome prizes you donated added excitement to the book drive and helped to make it a success. Also a shout out to these individuals for donating their time and expertise: Master David Clawson for leading the warm-up, the Foothill High School Madrigal singers for leading us beautifully in singing the National Anthem, Old Towne Film Festival Director Dan Parks for filming BOOK IT on the ground and by drone, photographer Annie White for her professional photography, and CHOC mascot costume wearer veteran MaKenna Clawson for donning the heavy CHOCO suit again this year! A HUGE thank you to the BOOK IT planning committee for their incredibly hard work in the weeks and months leading up to event day — Susie Alexander, Mary Kay Viscounty, Jeanie Viveros, Fenny Kokenge, Kristin Chahbazian, Juliet Hilde, Anne Case, Suzanne Bernardy, Sandy Tweedt, and Patti Wilkins. And, this event could not have happened without the robust group of approximately 100 volunteers who came out to help on race day. Thank you to ECBC’s Bedside Readers, the Assistance League of Tustin, Youth Action Team High School, the National League of Young Men Tustin, the Kiwanis Club of Irvine, and the UCI and Irvine Valley College Circle K Club. This event is a big undertaking for our tiny organization, and it truly does take a community to pull it off. You are all so appreciated.
And finally, thank you to the many individuals and families who signed up and showed up, thus contributing to our great turn-out despite the four-year gap since our last in-person BOOK IT. A special thank you to our largest teams: Foothill High School, Mercer Cares, Ethan’s Family & Friends, Cavalry Church, We Love Literacy – Team Hilde, Anaheim Run Club, OC Parent Guide, and Team Ethan Lakin Loves to Read. The large teams help our numbers so much! And a very special thank you to all of the oncology and other CHOC patients and families who joined us — your strength, perseverance, and bravery inspire us every day to create programs that help you thrive and become tomorrow’s future leaders
Thank you for BOOKing IT for reading for patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital! We sincerely hope that our community views ECBC’s cause as their cause too, benefiting the kids of Orange County who end up in the hospital. See you back next year for BOOK IT 2024!
** If you couldn’t make it on race day but would still like to contribute to our annual fundraiser, it’s not too late! The online book drive/fundraising campaign will be running for a month after the event, until October 4, 2023.
Our full collection of event photos, including shots of all our exhibitors and medal winners, will be uploaded soon.
Today is September 1, marking the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. EVERY DAY, 47 KIDS IN THE U.S. ARE DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER. Every day, 47 families’ lives are flipped completely upside down. If you haven’t signed up FOR BOOK IT yet, please consider joining us on Labor Day in Irvine to help ECBC continue to do our part in helping kids to THRIVE against cancer with high-quality books and reading experiences. In addition to the 1K and 5K walk/runs with t-shirts and medals, there will be local authors and booksellers, terrific food trucks, raffle prizes, and FREE fun for kids including bounce house, face painting, balloon artist, caricature drawings, and photo booth with free prints!
BOOK IT 2023 is now 12 days away…and we still need 340 more sign-ups! Please check out Old Towne Film Festival Director Dan Park’s video plug below AND SIGN UP NOW AT https://runsignup.com/BOOKIT2023!
BOOK IT 2023 is now 13 days away…and we need 350 more sign-ups to sustain our book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. PLEASE HELP by signing up now and/or sharing this with your friends/family/community.
WHAT: BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids
WHEN: Monday, September 4 (Labor Day), 7:00 – 10:00 AM
WHERE: Jeffrey Trail Middle School in Irvine
WHY: To raise money for books and reading at CHOC — ECBC gifts 500-600 new books per month + bedside reading, primarily for patients with cancer and other life-altering illnesses
WHAT ELSE: Book character costume contest with prizes; 3 great food trucks; fun for kids including bounce house, face painter, balloon artist, caricature artist, photo booth; local authors and booksellers; and a raffle with prizes
BOOK IT 2023 is now 14 days away…and we need 350 more sign-ups to sustain our book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. PLEASE HELP by signing up now and/or sharing this with your friends/family/community.
WHAT: BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids
WHEN: Monday, September 4 (Labor Day), 7:00 – 10:00 AM
WHERE: Jeffrey Trail Middle School in Irvine
WHY: To raise money for books and reading at CHOC — ECBC gifts 500-600 new books per month + bedside reading, primary for patients with cancer and other life-altering illnesses
WHAT ELSE: Book character costume contest with prizes; 3 great food trucks; fun for kids including bounce house, face painter, balloon artist, caricature artist, photo booth; local authors and booksellers; and a raffle with prizes
We’re excited to announce that BOOK IT is finally back as an in-person charity walk/run, after a 4 year hiatus! Currently, ECBC is giving away 500+ new books monthly to patients atCHOC Children’s Hospital (largely to oncology warriors and other kids battling life-altering illness), and our volunteers are reading aloud at patients’ bedside. Please join us in Irvine on the morning of Sept 4, and help us to sustain our book and reading programs at CHOC! You can register quickly by clicking the graphic below, and enter BOOKIT2023_earlyreg20 for an early registration discount of 20% per registrant. Also please consider creating a walking/running team and recruit others to join your team (works great for friends/family, sports teams, corporate team…any group!).
Click above to access registration site.
We also are looking for sponsors at most levels including Title Sponsor. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities, click on the “become a sponsor” tab on the BOOK IT registration site, or email ali@ECbookclub for more information.
This year’s BOOK IT will feature:
1K Fun Run and 5K Walk/Run
Race warm-up led by PaKua Master David Clawson and CHOC mascot CHOCO
T-shirt, medal, and electronic timing results
Book character costume contest with prizes
On-site booksellers + book drive, with raffle for donating a book
Other literary-themed activities
Thank you for helping ECBC to help Orange County’s hospitalized kids thrive with books and reading. We hope to see you on September 4 at the start line!
A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who supported ECBC’s BOOK IT 2022 Virtual Run and Book Drive by “running” 5, donating 5, creating a fundraising team, and/or sharing on social media. Together, 123 donors raised $25,000. While this is only half of our fundraising goal, we knew this goal was ambitious yet hopeful, reflecting the increased costs of our growing book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. The BOOK IT donation site is still up and open for donations if you haven’t had a chance to contribute (runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022), though there will be no more explicit monetary pushes for BOOK IT until 2023. We will immediately be turning to outreach for our Halloween book drive (for which we need approximately 600 new books), and we are hopeful that a strong response in the form of direct book donations will minimize book purchases and thus the cash output towards our Halloween event.
I would like to extend a super special thank you to our top donors and fundraising teams. Thank you to our top fundraisers Mary Kay Viscounty, Susie Alexander, and Dr. Van Huynh (as well as ECBC Co-Founder Ethan)… We are so grateful for your personal efforts to rally others behind our cause. A tremendous thank you also to our top individual “$500 and above” donors: Tod and Sharon Paris, Keith and Katherine Dunleavy, Kevin Kodzis, CHOC Hyundai Cancer Institute, Sur West Homes, Shameeron Paur, Rob and Brooke Lieberman, Molly Cronin, Tootie Nienow, Erin and Jeff Denes, Susie Alexander, Tracy and Jeremy Stahl, the Antonius family, and an ongoing ECBC friend and advocate who wishes to remain anonymous but deserves mention being our very top donor (this year and every year prior!). Together, this mighty group was vital to the success of this campaign, having contributed more than 60% of the total funds raised. Finally, a special shout out to Jack Carlisle/The Potting Shed and Fenny Kokenge/Fenny’s Flowers as well as Dori Renn/Cirkel Fitness for hosting your own events in the community (Houseplants 101, DIY succulents, yoga class) to raise awareness and funds for BOOK IT! And of course, thank you to the ECBC Board of Directors for all their efforts and commitment to keep ECBC going.
Thank you everyone for supporting ECBC during this especially difficult time to be a super tiny nonprofit. Your donations allow ECBC to keep helping hospitalized kids to thrive through treatment with books and reading — which is a powerful contributor to cognitive health and thus general wellness and thrivership.
Please stay connected with ECBC by following us on our website (ethanandchocosbookclub.com) or on Facebook/Instagram (@ethanandchocosbookclub). And save the date for BOOKIT 2023, hopefully in-person — Monday, September 4.
With deepest gratitude,
Ali, Ethan and the ECBC Team
* Please know that 100% of funds and books raised go to ECBC operating and program costs — ECBC has no employees and I take no salary.
Today is the last day of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and it is also the final day of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT Fundraiser! We are just under 50% of our fundraising goal, so if anyone has intended to donate but hasn’t yet had the chance, PLEASE consider doing so now — it takes just a few minutes! Today we feature two of the many oncology kiddos who have benefited from our Read Think Thrive Bag program: Carter, who is no longer with us but his love of reading impacts ECBC through his amazing community’s CarterStrongForever book drives; and Blake, a current oncology warrior who is reading and thriving through a marathon of a battle with brain cancer. These bags (a mini library of ten new books curated by the age of the child + book crafting supplies) go to every child at CHOC infant/toddler through teen/young adult who is diagnosed with cancer, and the goal is to someday get these to all kids who are diagnosed with cancer throughout the U.S.– a hefty goal for our tiny nonprofit with a cost of approximately $150/bag. New cancer diagnoses at CHOC this year are the highest they have been in the history of the hospital — at 94 to date since January, we need additional funding to keep up!
If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our Read Think Thrive Bag program for kids just diagnosed with cancer , we would so appreciate your support! Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022. We know first hand the benefits of books and reading through treatment and are passionate about making sure other patients have the same opportunities to thrive — but we need your help! Please share this post if you can!
There are two days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are at just 40% of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in our final two days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I have been sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Today we have two featured warriors: Blake, holding one of the two Halloween-themed books he received from ECBC’s annual BOO-ks for Treats event at CHOC (where we donate approximately 600 new Halloween books for patients toddler through young adult); and Isabella, an oncology patient living at Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families) who just received books from ECBC at the Miracle Manor Christmas party (ECBC provides holiday books for all kids living at Miracle Manor, picked out for each child by their personal interests). If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our book gifting programs for oncology kids stuck in the hospital over the holidays , we would so appreciate your support! Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022. Even the smallest donations will help us to keep all of our programs going!
There are three days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are at just 40% of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in these last few days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I am sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Here’s today’s featured warrior: Ruby, a teen cancer patient at CHOC who is a member of ECBC’s Teens Thrive Reading Group — a virtual book club for teen and young adult oncology patients and survivors that provides a free Kindle, Kindle case, and monthly Kindle books to participants. The club is currently offered to CHOC oncology patients but with enough funding we hope to expand it to offer to oncology teens across the country. If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our teen/young adult book club program, we would so appreciate your support! Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
There are just four days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are just shy of 2/5 of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in these last few days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I am sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Here’s today’s featured warrior: a child on the inpatient side who is being read to by Mary Kay, one of ECBC’s amazing bedside readers/literacy coach experts who shares quality literature and reads aloud in a way that models and nurtures literacy skills and rich dialogue. Oncology patients are often not attending school and missing literature-based classroom experiences, and they also often receive chemo that affects their neurocognitive functioning — so this program aims to provide cognitive benefits in addition to social and emotional ones! Our bedside reading program depends on hardcover books for read alouds, paperback books that can be gifted, art supplies for book-inpspired crafting, and other support materials such as bookmarks, motivational reading bracelets, parent “how to support literacy through treatment” pamphlets and various operational costs including off-site storage of books. If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our inpatient bedside reading program, we would so appreciate your support. Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
There are just five days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are just shy of 2/5 of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in these last few days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I am sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Here’s today’s featured warrior: Will is selecting a book as he leaves the Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) after receiving chemo — kids get to select a book at every visit to the OPI or the Oncology Clinic from our outpatient gifting libraries. If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our outpatient libraries for kids like Will, we would so appreciate your support. Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
It’s more than halfway through Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which means it’s more than halfway through our annual BOOK IT fundraiser! And we’ve only raised 1/4 of our fundraising goal — a goal we need to reach to be able to continue all our book gifting and reading programs at CHOC, as well as to grow our impact to reach more kids on more patient floors. This past week, a Facebook memory popped up from September 15th, six years ago. It was a post with a link to this video of Ethan giving his 259th “Book Look”, which was how we collected our first few thousand books after initially launching ECBC. Ethan was still in the midst of treatment, and as is obvious, he is visibly not feeling well (link to video: https://youtu.be/e742S_o5HvA). This video, of Ethan pushing through the discomfort caused by chemo and steroids, is a reminder of just how strongly he believed in the mission of ECBC and wanted to ensure that other kids going through treatment for cancer received the same benefits of books and reading. In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and our efforts to continue to help oncology patients and other hospitalized kids to continue to thrive w, please help us!
If you haven’t yet completed our Run5-Donate5-Nominate5- challenge, please click on the “Donate” button in this email to learn more and make a “multiple of 5” donation. If doing the challenge feels too difficult, of course you can simply donate! We need our community to keep on doing what we do!
Click on graphic above to access the BOOK IT donation site
This photo popped up in my Facebook feed today — from September 1, 2015 — the first day of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month six years ago and also the day that Ethan returned to school for 3rd grade after missing all of second grade. He had just finished the hardest part of his 3.5 year battle with Leukemia. While he still had a ways to go at this point with 2.5 more years of chemo, he was kicking cancer’s butt — loving school, playing tennis and golf, and reading voraciously into so many fictional and nonfictional worlds. This photo was also just a few months before we founded Ethan & Choco’s Book Club (ECBC), where Ethan and I committed to making sure that kids undergoing treatment at CHOC, especially life-altering illness such as cancer, received the same benefits from books and reading that he did while battling Leukemia.
ECBC has come a long way since its inception — with numerous inpatient and outpatient reading programs for patients of all ages and gifting thousands of books a year. BUT we need your help in order to sustain our book gifting programs and re-launch our inpatient programs in October (we were just given the green light to bring our volunteers back to CHOC, woo hoo!). We are highly dependent on our annual fundraiser, BOOK IT, which provides the majority of the funds ECBC needs to run its programs. In the spirit of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month , please consider supporting thrivership for kid cancer warriors by donating to our online fundraiser. We are aiming to raise enough funds to get us to next September 2022, when we are hoping to host a full BOOK IT with a return of our in-person charity runs and book drive.
Become a “fundraiser”, with your own fundraiser name, monetary goal, and unique URL that can be used to send people directly to your fundraiser page. Click here to set up your fundraising page.
Donate a book directly.Click here to access the BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List. All books purchased from this list will be automatically sent to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club.
Conduct your own book drive. If you wish to collect books on your own or conduct your own book drive with your family/friends/workplace for subsequent in-person donation, please email ali@ECbookclub.com We will send you a link to a separate wish list that you can share with your community and that let’s you specify the address to ship the books.
We’re currently running our annual fundraising push — which is, again for a second year, online only. We so wish it could be through our in-person charity run and book drive, though that was not possible due to the ongoing uncertainty around potential Covid-19 restrictions at the time that event decisions had to be made. HOWEVER, ECBC NEEDS YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER! Our costs are way up, since outgoing book donations actually increased during Covid, while incoming book donations have been way down over the past year and a half. Additionally, ECBC just received the green light to resume our bedside reading and library programs on the inpatient side of CHOC on October 15th. Which is AWESOME news — but we need enough funds to sustain the new book gifting activities we are doing with CHOC outpatient as well as re-launch our programs that we were running pre-Covid. We are aiming to raise enough funds to get us to September 2022, when we are hoping to host a full BOOK IT with a return of our in-person charity runs, book drive, and celebration of thrivership against cancer through books and reading!
Here are five ways you can support the BOOK IT 2021 virtual fundraiser:
Become a “fundraiser”, with your own fundraiser name, monetary goal, and unique URL that can be used to send people directly to your fundraiser page. Click here to set up your fundraising page.
Donate a book directly.Click here to access the BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List. All books purchased from this list will be automatically sent to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club.
Conduct your own book drive. If you wish to collect books on your own or conduct your own book drive with your family/friends/workplace for subsequent in-person donation, please email ali@ECbookclub.com We will send you a link to a separate wish list that you can share with your community and that let’s you specify the address to ship the books.
It’s that time of year for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club to do our annual fundraising push. We wish it could be through our in-person charity run and book drive. However, due to the ongoing uncertainty around potential Covid-19 restrictions at the time that event decisions had to be made, ECBC will not be hosting our in-person event again this year. We are, however, conducting the virtual fundraising and book drive component of BOOK IT, which we hope will receive a strong response so that ECBC can continue to sustain and grow its book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital.
We need your support now more than ever! Our costs are way up (since outgoing book donations actually increased during Covid), while incoming book donations have been way down over the past year and a half. We are aiming to raise enough funds to get us to September 2022, when we are hoping to host a full BOOK IT with a return of our in-person charity runs, book drive, and celebration of thrivership against cancer through books and reading!
Here are five ways you can support the BOOK IT 2021 virtual fundraiser:
Become a “fundraiser”, with your own fundraiser name, monetary goal, and unique URL that can be used to send people directly to your fundraiser page. Click here to set up your fundraising page.
Donate a book directly.Click here to access the BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List. All books purchased from this list will be automatically sent to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club.
Conduct your own book drive. If you wish to collect books on your own or conduct your own book drive with your family/friends/workplace for subsequent in-person donation, please email ali@ECbookclub.com We will send you a link to a separate wish list that you can share with your community and that let’s you specify the address to ship the books.
A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who supported ECBC’s BOOK IT 2020 Virtual Book Drive by donating, creating a fundraising team, and/or sharing on social media! 124 donors raised $22,000+, which is just over 2/3 of our fundraising goal. While this is not quite enough to sustain our full programs once we are given the green light to do so, it is wonderful given that we could not have our annual in-person event this year (which has been responsible for 50% of our revenue in past years) — and it is enough for ECBC to get going now with our Covid-modified programs.
The BOOK IT donation site is still up and open for donations if you haven’t had a chance to contribute (runsignup.com/BOOKIT2020), though there will be no more explicit monetary donation pushes for BOOK IT until 2021. We still will, however, need to continue with outreach for book donations, especially since our programming is currently 100% book gifting and with a lack of our usual large school and philanthropic group book donations.*
I would like to extend a super special thank you to our top donors and fundraising teams. THANK YOU to our top fundraisers Mary Kay Viscounty, Susie Alexander, Team Portstreets, and Zack Adzich. We are so grateful for your personal efforts to rally others behind our cause. A tremendous thank you also to our top individual donors: Tod & Sharon Paris, Fidelity National Title Company, Bill and Royce Bellaty, Kevin Kodzis, Behr Paint, Fenny’s Flowers, Enderle Center, Peter Royston, Stahl Family, Antonius Family, Tweedt Family, and an ongoing ECBC friend and advocate who wishes to remain anonymous but deserves mention being our very top donor! Together, this mighty group was vital to the success of this campaign, having contributed more than half of the total funds raised.
Thank you for supporting ECBC during this especially difficult time to be a super tiny nonprofit. Your donations allow ECBC to keep helping hospitalized kids to thrive through treatment with books and reading — which is a powerful contributor to cognitive health and thus general wellness.
Please stay connected with ECBC by following us on our website (ethanandchocosbookclub.com) or on Facebook/Instagram (@ethanandchocosbookclub). And save the date for BOOKIT 2021, hopefully in-person — Monday, September 6.
With deepest gratitude,
Ali, Ethan and the ECBC Team
* Please know that 100% of funds and books raised go to ECBC operating and program costs — ECBC has no employees and I take no salary.
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!
WOOHOO! I am so excited about today’s delivery to CHOC Children’s Hospital and ECBC’s re-launching of several of our book/reading programs after a six month hiatus (since all of our programs have been on hold because they have depended on volunteers). Now, thanks to CHOC’s awesome outpatient oncology nurse manager Ali Langdon and staff who are willing to store, manage, and deliver books for us, we can get books into patients’ hands in Covid-safe ways! Today, we dropped off the first installment of our Read Think Thrive Book Bags to be given to kids as they are diagnosed with cancer This is the first time we’ve been able to store these bags on site, and so it will be the first time we will actually be able to get the bags to all kids as they are diagnosed (a Covid-inspired improvement!). Additionally, today we also delivered supplies to start offering a brand new program for teen cancer warriors and survivors — a virtual book club (called Teens Thrive Reading Group and curated by ECBC now-teen co-founder Ethan) that includes gifting teens who want to participate with a new Kindle and monthly e-books. We can’t wait to grow this club into a safe space for teens to share their thoughts about both literary and personal stories! Finally, we created and delivered our new CHOC Oncology Outpatient Library (COOL) Cart filled with 250 curated books organized by book type, to be wheeled to patients’ rooms (oncology patients and kids with other chronic illnesses) while they are receiving infusions at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI). In the past, ECBC’s book deliveries to OPI went on open shelves for patients to grab. With this new Covid-safe method, nurses will offer books personally to every patient/caregiver, encouraging them to take a break from screens and other activities to do a bit of reading/reading aloud.
Which gets me to the 29th (of 30) way that ECBC has helped hospitalized kids thrive — through providing books to kids at their OPI visits — now in a way that is much more personal and will result in significantly more books being gifted than before (there are 150 patient visits to OPI per week!). If you haven’t yet supported BOOK IT (which ends tomorrow) and would like to donate to help fund and sustain the OPI book cart, please go to runsignup.com/BOOKIT2020: $10 provides one book for the cart, $50 provides five books, $1000 provides one shelf of books; and $2500 re-stocks the entire cart (which will last approximately 1-3 weeks). We need your help more than ever, especially since we are not receiving any help from school book fairs and book drives which typically have provided most of our gifting library books! THANK YOU for supporting BOOK IT, ECBC’s new and re-launched programs, and helping to honor cancer warriors during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month!
