A Barrow woman has made and donated over 500 literacy packs to children in need for Christmas.
Kayleigh Graveson, 30, a career advisor for Inspira, has spent the year rallying people to donate books, notepads, pens and stickers to help her build literacy packs for local children aged five to 11.
After spending hours carefully putting the packs together, she has now donated all 575 of them to three local schools as well as the Women’s Community Matters charity.
It’s a project that Kayleigh has quietly grown and coordinated on her own after spending the past three years donating books to local schools, inspired by her experiences of teacher training.
She said: “I was doing teacher training back in 2019 in Lancashire and there were children who were coming to school with nothing and they had no access to books or things like that at home.
“Since 2022, I’ve been donating books to local schools, so it’s really my third year doing it I suppose.
“I’ve been trying to make the packs throughout the year, I was just going to do books initially, but around September time I tried to start making the packs because I thought it would make a better present for children who might not have much.
“But one of the ideas behind creating the packs was that kids might have nowhere to go after they’ve read their book.
“So I thought if they had something like a notepad or something to write into, it could be their way to have a voice too, because they don’t always have that.”
Kayleigh said she set up an Amazon wish list in order to make the packs and has had donations from dozens of people.
The packs have all been made for different ages and contain items like plain paper pads, picture books, novels, pencils with inspiration quotes, stickers, colouring pens, bookmarks, and pencils, pencil sharpeners.
Overall, Kayleigh said she has managed to donate a total of 682 books as part of the packs.
She said: “I thought I would only do one school at first, but it just snowballed into doing more and more.
“People have been really generous, and it’s been total strangers donating lots of things too. I have an Amazon wish list and people have donated by buying things from that and I’ve then been making up these packs from home.
“But it has taken quite a bit of time to get the donations and then pack things and make sure everything is age appropriate for the children.”
Kayleigh said she hopes the packs help make a difference over the festive period.
She said: “I know some kids are not going to get anything at all for Christmas and I hope the children who get these packs get skills out of them or an interest in reading that could change their lives.
“Some kids have a bad perception of reading because it can be associated with school, so I’m hoping this can help change that and make it feel more positive.
“But the idea that it might change somebodies life is a nice feeling.”
