26 October 2023
We are delighted to win ‘Best Virtual Non-Fundraising Event 2023’ for our 2023 World Book Day event with Michael Morpurgo.
On World Book Day in March 2023, Read for Good hosted a free online ‘meet the author’ event with Sir Michael Morpurgo. Celebrating 40 years of his book, ‘War Horse’, this event was open to any school that had signed up to Readathon across the 2022-23 academic year.
The event was designed to support education, inspire children to read for pleasure, and to share the experience of hearing from an iconic author in an affordable and accessible way. With excerpt readings, a live Q&A (featuring children’s questions), and guided discussion by a Read for Good professional storyteller, the event was inspiring, lively and well-attended.
This event was incredibly successful not only in terms of its reach (over 75,000 children watching live, plus thousands more after the event on catch-up), but also due to its impact.
The event coincided with the widely publicised teacher strikes, allowing numerous students who were suddenly out of school to have a ‘World Book Day’ experience from home with the livestream link.
The event access link was sent to all of Read for Good’s hospital partners, so that even children who were experiencing World Book Day from a ward could get involved and celebrate the magic of reading.
Alongside the immediate educational benefits, the event also saw hundreds of schools inspired to host a Readathon sponsored read in the weeks leading up to and after World Book Day. Over the 2022-23 academic year, over £429,000 was raised by students reading for pleasure, which contributes to Read for Good’s work bringing books and stories to children in hospitals across the UK.
We were announced as a winner at the Fundraising Everywhere Charity Virtual Event Awards https://www.fundraisingeverywhere.com/2023virtualawards/winners/ on October 26th 2023 and have been awarded a €1,000 donation and one year of free Fundraising Everywhere Membership.
The event is now freely available on our website here https://readforgood.org/events-archive/, along with more fabulous author, illustrator and storyteller events.
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