Alastair Campbell hosts the M+C Saatchi Seminar

And James, I want to come to you in a minute specifically about how this whole thing works, but, but Liberty, just, just if you were sort of meeting somebody for the first time, and, you know, "What do you do for a living, Liberty?" "I do this," how do you explain what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve with it?

Our ambition is to, is to give every child the chance to own books so that they can feel part of that community of, of children when they go into school and can talk about the books they love and want to share and pass on.

And Tom mentioned in his introduction about the difference between owning and, and...

I mean, I love libraries, right?

Yeah.

And I'm a great fan of libraries, but what is the difference between owning and borrowing?

So I think the first thing to say is we're working with children in 500 schools this year And the majority of those schools run food banks, and if they don't, then they're signposting their families to a local food bank.

And a lot of them have washing machines running throughout the school day to wash their children's school uniforms.

These are families who simply do not have the opportunity to go out and purchase books, even from a charity shop.

So those children are kind of left outside of feeling part of that community.

The, in the very first instance, having the chance to come along to a Children's Book Project book festival put on by their school and choose from like a wide selection of beautiful books, they're pre-loved, but they're beautiful, gives children the chance to select something for themselves.

And that has a significant impact on their self-esteem.

So we began in North Kensington, and the headteacher there, and she said something to m- to us that was really, really kind of powerful years ago now.

And she said, "It shows our children that they deserve to own these lovely things." I think that underpins a lot of kind of what makes us passionate about what we do.

Then building on that, um, when we have volunteers come in, and we have corporate volunteers that come in, I thinkSacha coming, EMC, Sacha coming in soon to volunteer with us.

When they come in, we talk about the fact that by putting multiple books, and the children we work with have the chance to choose lots of books to take home over the course of a year and keep them all free of charge.

By having that opportunity, there are just books around them in the home.

There are kind of books incidental in their bedroom.

They get a chance to kind of lose them down the side of the bed and find them again.

Their parents are all committed parents, and they're committed to developing their children's literacy, and that book bag comes home from school, and it's, it's read.

But then the books are often put back in the book bag, and it's put on the fridge and read in this for the school day.

So there aren't books kind of around them in the home, and it's that kind of opportunity that is lost there for children to just discover books when the mood strikes them.

Like, feeling like reading, along with all the other things I like doing, I feel like, you know, dipping into a book.

Few opportunities then for bedtime stories, and there are a few opportunities for that child, you know, your son, to have the chance to kind of identify with reading as a really pleasurable time where they have one-on-one time with somebody at home.

So that kind of underpins so much what drives us.