Co-founder Ethan speaks at Tarbut v’ Torah’s (TVT) Lower School, where he shares his story of battling cancer and founding ECBC. This kicked off the book drive that TVT will host next week alongside their school book fair, where the 4th and 5th grade leadership class will try to rally the school to beat their 2019 record of 310 books. ECBC is so grateful for TVT’s annual support since 2016!
Today was our monthly outpatient delivery day at CHOC Children’s Hospital, and we delivered a TON of books! We provided the Hyundai Cancer Institute with 54 of our Read Think Thrive book bags for kids who are newly diagnosed with cancer (each bag containing 10 new books + art supplies and book-specific crafting ideas). The hospital is having a record high number of cancer diagnoses this year — and we are trying to keep up so that kids can start off their battles with age-appropriate and high-quality literature that nourishes their cognitive health. We also delivered 200 books to refill our libraries at the Outpatient Infusion Center and at the Oncology Clinic. Which amounts to a total of 760 new books donated today for kids battling cancer and other life-altering conditions. Thank you to all of our donors who allow us to continue to support oncology kids’ thrivership with books and reading! To contribute a December holiday themed book for next month’s outpatient delivery, click HERE.
Thank you @pagesabookstore (in Manhattan Beach) for hosting a book drive for ECBC, and thank you @novelthoughts_bymax for organizing it. Forty-nine great books, mostly Halloween-themed…which will be delivered to patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital in the next few days!
Andersen Elementary School in Newport Beach hosted a coin drive for ECBC alongside their school book fair. With the funds collected, they were able to purchase 102 new Halloween books for our Halloween book gifting at CHOC next week! THANK YOU Andersen Elementary for supporting ECBC and for helping us get closer to the significant number of books we need to collect!
Foothill High School’s ECBC Club is off to a great start this year! To date, they participated in club rush to recruit members, were part of the school-wide clubs fundraiser Feast and Joust, held their first informational meeting of the year, and have filled their board positions for the year. And today, they made Halloween bookmarks for our BOO-ks for Treats event at the end of the month and also completed “Thrive Buddy” literature responses for our book bags for kids diagnosed with cancer. (see photo below with today’s terrific turnout!). The club plans to continue to create literacy support materials for CHOC patients as well as run book drives and fundraisers. Keep it up FHS ECBC Club!
If you know someone who is interested in starting an ECBC Club at their high school, see the info sheet below to learn more about how a school ECBC Club can support books and reading for Orange County’s Hospitalized kids!
Thank you to the Orange Chamber of Commerce for conducting a Halloween book drive in the month of September, and of course thank you to everyone who contributed to it. They collected a terrific collection of 119 new Halloween-themed books, which gives us a great start towards the 600 books that we need for our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween event at CHOC Children’s Hospital. And a huge THANK YOU to Orange Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Elizabeth Holloman for all your work to organize and oversee the book drive — sharing the wish list, opening all the packages, bookplating with donor names; we appreciate your help so very much!!
If anyone didn’t get a chance to donate a Halloween book and would like to, we still need hundreds! You can select a book off our list and it will come directly to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club: https://a.co/8wsb23B
THANK YOU PaKua Orange for hosting a book drive in the month of September, and THANK YOU PaKua families for the 84 books that you donated. PaKua has supported ECBC since our first BOOK IT fundraiser in 2018 and we appreciate their continued partnership so very much!
THANK YOU Arroyo families for donating 52 great books at your book fair last week! ECBC is so grateful for your ongoing support for the past seven years!
It’s October, which means it’s time to turn to our Halloween book drive for our 6th annual BOO-ks for Treats event at CHOC Children’s Hospital. This is always a hard ask immediately after our BOOK IT fundraiser. However, this event has become a significant part of CHOC’s Halloween celebration, it is especially important to our founder Ethan, and the number of books that we need for it is quite hefty (approximately 600 new books). If you didn’t get a chance to donate to BOOK IT, please listen to Ethan’s video and consider purchasing a book or two from our Halloween-themed Amazon wish list. Especially since we only made it to halfway of our fundraising goal for BOOK IT, your help with this is even more important. Patients love getting high-quality Halloween themed books along with their usual candy and trinkets, so we absolutely LOVE being able to provide “literary candy” for the kids! All books purchased from this wish list will go directly to ECBC, and bookplates with donor names will go on every book. THANK YOU!
CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON WISH LIST LINK.
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.
