Overview of Lil Tots
Check out our video overview of the Lil Tots project
Inequality starts early in life. Many kids from families experiencing disadvantage enter school ‘developmentally vulnerable'. This has a big impact on learning outcomes down the track and can further entrench the cycle of disadvantage. We're setting up Lil Tots, an online kids bookstore, to fund early childhood education programs for families experiencing disadvantage and promote the importance of reading to kids.
Please read on below to learn more about Lil Tots or make a donation to help us get off the ground. Thank you!
The Lil Tots Story
Great mates since we were 12 years old, we’ve joined forces to start something we are both really passionate about; helping kids through great children’s literature. We know that getting a great start in literacy is key to success at school and beyond and want to make sure that as many kids as possible have the opportunity to develop their early literacy skills.
Asher is the numbers man. He’s a research and data nerd, and has worked in the marketing industry in Australia and New York. However, most excitingly, he’s a recent dad and while researching in preparation for his own little ones arrival, he discovered that according to the Australian Early Development Census, 22 percent of children starting school are ‘developmentally vulnerable’ (this is a lot higher for families experiencing disadvantage). He was shocked by this statistic and wanted to do something about it. So he decided to get Lainie on board.
Lainie has been teaching for over a decade, with seven years as a Prep teacher. She has helped hundreds and hundreds of little ones start their schooling journey and is extremely passionate about early years education, teaching children through play and helping to develop a love of learning through language and literature. After working closely with local kindergartens and early childhood educators in her community on the transition into school, she knows that literacy development in the early years is absolutely vital. Unfortunately, this is also where the inequality begins. She also owns several hundred picture story books and has read most of them to her students many, many, many times - so she know what makes a great kids book!
The Lil Tots Bookstore
Reading plays a big role in all areas of childhood development. Not only does it help develop vital early literacy skills, but it fosters and develops all the things that are most important for a successful start to schooling; social skills, emotional intelligence, problem solving, a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world, imagination and play. We have wonderful recollections of reading and being read too, but not all kids get access to this type of experience. Many of you will have fond memories of your favourite childhood stories. For us, it was The Giving Tree, Possum Magic, Animalia, Drac and the Gremlin and The Paperbag Princess. Books that not only helped us develop literacy skills, but that taught us to be kind and caring, how to speak to and play games with others, to love play and adventure, to solve problems and to be courageous.
Great children’s literature is essential to building early literacy skills, so we want to create a ripper of a children’s online bookstore. It will have a small and carefully curated selection of picture story books for children aged 0-8 which will help foster a love of reading and build vital oral language and pre-reading skills. We’ve used our expertise in early childhood education to select only the best books for you to share with the little people in your life.
Lil Tots Charity Partnership
And here’s the kicker...when you buy a book from us, you are not only supporting the development of the children in your life, but you're also helping support the early childhood literacy development of children experiencing disadvantage in Australia. 50% of our profits will go towards early childhood literacy initiatives. We have chosen to partner with Reading Out of Poverty (ROOP), an amazing organisation which helps support literacy development in the early years in some of Victoria’s most disadvantaged communities.
We will partner with ROOP, to help fund programs that include parent mentoring, read aloud time, pop-up libraries and the publishing and distribution of ROOP’s own early childhood board book ‘Play A Game With Me’. This book is printed in over nine languages and is distributed to new Mother’s via their maternal child health nurses. Once our expenses are paid, 50% of our profits will go towards ROOP and funding these vital initiatives which help ensure more children are getting the vital early literacy skills they need for future success.
How You Can Help
So here is where we need your help. We’ve been very busy and have done all the groundwork we need to kick off; we’ve selected the best books, established connections with book distributors, selected ROOP as our partner and got a website ready to roll...but books are expensive and we need to get the word out there, so we need your help to fund our initial bulk order and initial marketing campaign so we can get selling and start helping your kids develop a love of reading, while doing our bit to help close the gap for some of our communities most disadvantaged kids.
