Read a free children's book online today and help We Give Books and the OCHO Project put books in the hands of underprivileged children across America.

OCHO (Opportunities for Children to Help Others) is dedicated to helping children support other children, both locally and globally, in an effort to improve their reading skills. Through reading books and completing academic reading exercises, students "earn" books and sponsor a free OCHO book fair for children at schools from low income areas.

The OCHO Project: Read for a Need was created as a way to encourage a love of reading for young children, enhance their literary skills, and show them a way that they can help provide books for children who have few or none of their own.

The OCHO Project is a character based service-learning program that is dedicated to exposing children to the joys of reading while teaching them that, through reading, they can also help others less fortunate than themselves. The primary objective of the program is to have students read, not only to expand their own knowledge but also to help "earn" books for their fellow students. Students "serve" and "learn" while having the opportunity to experience eighteen character values (such as empathy, honesty, respect, responsibility, cooperation, tolerance, etc.) that are integrated into the OCHO Project.

In its first year, the OCHO Project was completed at seven schools. Ten thousand books were "earned" by students and distributed at free OCHO book fairs to students in Title 1 schools. These children were then taught that it was important for them to "pay it forward" by sending some of their books to a school where students were even less fortunate than they were. The books were well received by grateful children at a rural school in Babati, Tanzania. This gift of books culminated in a multi-cultural understanding of life for the African children and a greater appreciation by the American children of how fortunate they are to have simple things like water, lunch, a desk, and a roof over their schoolroom.

Each year, books will be sent by the students to different places around the world to connect the students with the wider world around them.

With your participation, We Give Books will help provide participating schools with a total of 5,000 books.