First Book and The Rise Up Foundation to Bring $130,000 in New Books to Schools, Programs Devastated by Natural Disasters

WASHINGTON and ORANGE, Calif. (January 29, 2019)—First Book, the nonprofit social enterprise committed to equal access to quality education, and the Rise Up Foundation, author Alane Adams’ nonprofit that promotes literacy in low-income communities, today announced they are partnering to bring $130,000 in brand-new books to disaster-affected communities in Houston, and Northern California. The partnership kicks off this week with an 11,600-book donation to Lake County, Calif., where Adams will also conduct school-wide assemblies at 12 schools devastated by last year’s Mendocino Complex Fire. Adams personally contributed 3,600 of the 11,600 books, and made a private donation to the Lake County Office of Education, which will be distributed to educators across six districts in the form of credits to purchase books on theFirst Book Marketplace(www.fbmarketplace.org). “We can’t allow our teachers or our children be among the collateral damage of these already-devastating fires,” said Kyle Zimmer, First Book president, CEO, and co-founder. “Schools are at the heart of every community; they provide a sense of normalcy and comfort. We need to ensure educators have everything they need to teach, and kids have everything they need to learn, not only for the sake of quality education, but for the sake of restoring communities.” From Hurricane Katrina to catastrophic floods, First Book has distributed more than 5 million books to educators, kids, and families affected by disasters, working with first responders, communities, schools, and libraries to get the right resources in the right hands at the right time. "Natural disasters cause not only financial devastation to communities but take a toll on the emotional well-being of its youngest citizens,” said Alane Adams, Rise Up Foundation founder. “The ability to put new books into the hands of children affected by these disasters is a way to help them return to a sense of normalcy and remind them that there is still magic in the world." Books and resources are critical, but scarce, for kids in need. Access to adequate resources is one of the greatest contributors to educational inequality in the United States, but research has identified vast ‘book deserts’ concentrated in low-income communities across the U.S.—with one community having only a single book to be shared among as many as 830 children.[1]Additionally, in a poll of the First Book network, 82 percent of respondents reported that without First Book their children would have very few or no new books.