A new target for tech disruption: Illiteracy. A product marketer and freelance web developer have started a site that collects recurring donations from Bay Area residents with something to spare, and converts that money into books that go to local schools that need them by providing credit to a subsidized bookseller.
Founders A.T. McWilliams and Holman Gao both have a longstanding interest in education: McWilliams was a teacher in Brooklyn before arriving in the Bay Area and saw firsthand how not having books keeps kids from learning to read. Gao is an entrepreneur with one other site dedicated to supporting schools already under his belt.
Within a month of launching, BookBooster had raised some $12,000, which the pair split evenly among 20 Bay Area K-12 schools. More recently, BookBooster has started working with three Mission schools, CĂ©sar ChĂ¡vez Elementary, Bryant Elementary, and Buena Vista Horace Mann School. CĂ©sar Chavez Elementary has already begun receiving books through the program, a teacher there confirmed – BookBooster says it has already distributed a total of 1,720 books throughout the Bay Area.
More information and donation processing can be found here.