Richmond businsses are asked if they can spare a donation to Ham Youth Centre which provides reading and leisure for many of the town's young people.

The centre wrote to many firms, urging them to support its community book pledge, which it is running with a children's publisher.

Staff have had to find innovative ways to support youth club members amid the lockdown, and they have held sessions via Zoom.

They have also delivered food and run activities on Instagram.

Read the letter in full

As part of a nationwide initiative we have been offered the chance to increase our youth club reading resources through a partnership between local businesses and other community organisations and Usborne Books at Home and School, a division of Usborne Publishing, a highly respected children's publisher.

We invite you to make a small donation to buy a book or books for our club.

Ham Youth Centre works with 11-19 year olds in Richmond and Kingston, offering affordable developmental activities for young people in their leisure time.

During lockdown we have been finding innovative ways to still support young people, including food deliveries, Zoom youth clubs and Instagram activities.

Being able to distribute free books to our members would greatly enhance the provision offered with a proposed virtual book club being set up where young people can give feedback on what they have been reading.

We are aiming to collect £1,000 in donations for the school, and Usborne will then generously provide an additional £200 worth of free books on top of this.

All businesses supporting us will receive acknowledgement on the social media linked to Ham Youth Centre and can also request a donor's poster to proudly display at their workplace.

The local coordinator of this scheme for Usborne is Martina Malik, who is an Independent Usborne Schools Representative and is duly authorised by me to promote this scheme with Ham Youth Centre being the beneficiary of all books purchased.

I do hope you will take part in this scheme, which will help raise the literary standards of our community's next business generation."

If you'd like to support Ham Youth Centre, email Martina on [email protected]

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