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Read about our Charitable Partners
The Literacy Site was founded to help promote literacy among children from low-income families nationwide. Partnering with First Book and Room to Read, the site makes books available to children around the world, giving many children their very first book. With the generous support of our sponsors, each click provides 1% of a book. Making books a part of a child's life is the best way to encourage the love of reading, and literacy is key in breaking the poverty cycle.
In addition to clicking the "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button, visitors can help make books available by shopping in The Literacy Site store. With each item purchased, shoppers generate funds for free books for children in need. The store offers a wide array of unique and meaningful items, including apparel, jewelry, home accents and gifts from around the world.
About the owners of The Literacy Site
Long-time friends and environmental activists, Tim Kunin and Greg Hesterberg met at the University of Michigan while working on the Michigan Bottle Bill ballot campaign in 1976. In the late 1990s, they recognized that broad consumer-adoption of the Internet offered a new opportunity to raise funds for good causes.
Enthusiastic supporters of The Hunger Site, they were able to buy that site and its sister sites in 2001. They were particularly excited to launch The Literacy Site since both are avid readers.
Tim Kunin is a life-long lover of wilderness who has canoed and hiked for thousands of miles in the United States, Canada, and Patagonia. He started working for environmental causes at the University of Michigan, where he walked 200 miles across the state to publicize the need for recycling. He is very interested in children's issues and has worked for many years with his wife Susan Guzmich and their children Mara and Daniel to raise money to help impoverished children.
Tim has traveled extensively to visit charity partners and purchase some of the fair-trade products available on our sites. He is convinced that providing a market for products made by rural women artisans is the best method of reducing inter-generational poverty. Travels have taken Tim to Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Sweden, England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa, Israel, India, and Afghanistan. Tim has purchased unique products in each of these countries which can in turn be purchased from the web stores here.
Greg Hesterberg was chairman of two statewide consumer and environmental organizations (MaryPIRG and PIRGIM) while in college. After 20 years running a successful publishing firm, Greg delights in finding innovative ways to make the world a better place.
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