Reached over 30,000 children - experience the joy of helping others yourself

Many books have influenced my life. Especially when I was a kid and others would read to me. Sitting cosily on a sofa, imagining the story being brought to life by the beloved voice reading it aloud. One of my highlights was the time my, at that time, favourite author did a reading in our school; an experience that left a deep impression on me. That is why, due to my own experience, I consider it important to have occasions that highlight the importance of reading books to others, like the German public reading day, which this year takes place on 21 November.

I have spent many hours of my life reading books to children; within the family, at summer camps, and more recently at various events with the book I wrote, "Ada & Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream". I have personally read the book to over 2,200 children; which remains as one of the most fulfilling activities in my life. Beyond the joy and impact it brings to the children, these experiences give me so much energy, that I channel into my work, for example to contribute to the work of my colleagues to counter back Apple’s arguments against interoperability before the European Court of Justice.

Would you also like to spark children's interest in coding and software freedom? Would you like to explain to them concepts such as the right to repair, the value of collaboration, and why “Public Money? Public Code!” is important for our society? And would you like to be motivated by their response?

Then please join many of our volunteers who have already held readings, and spend some time in November and December this year reading the book to children around you. Either at home, at a school, a library, to children of your co-workers, or at a local hackerspace.

It is simple, get a copy of the book and start reading it to them! Or, since all our "Ada & Zangemann" materials are available as Open Education Resource, you can easily download the materials in your language. E.g. for English:

• The PDF slides
• The story with comments about when to change the slides
• plus some general tips and tricks about the readings

Due to the licensing of the book and the movie, it is difficult to measure the exact numbers. However, we are confident that we have reached over 5,800 children with readings of the book and screenings of the movie, that over 20,000 printed copies of Ada & Zangemann in 8 languages were distributed, and that at least more than 7,400 people watched the movies. But no matter how many we reached until now, every new child you reach with the story will make a difference!

"I believe kids need to understand tech not only from a user's perspective but as something that they can modify themselves. Ada & Zangemann is one of the few kids books that explains the idea of Free Software to the very young. Reading it is a lot of fun: seeing kids follow the story, and share their stories of tinkering with technology. In addition, the author of the book makes it super easy to run readings by making slides, colouring pages and the like freely available. Free Software strives from people collaborating: So does the story of the book from people sharing it." Isabel Drost-Fromm, who read the book to children at conferences.

Please, try it out yourself: Read the book to others and thereby empower them to shape their future with technology.

PS: If you really do not feel comfortable reading it yourself, here a few others actions you can take to help:

• Share your thoughts about the story with others with this sharepic generator
• Share the movie with others or even organise a screening
• Help with translating and proofreading additional languages so we can reach more children in their mother tongue
• Join other volunteers who gifted the book to public libraries, a school, youth club, hackerspace or repair café in their area - or who gifted it to friends and family. (thanks to our volunteers in Denmark, we covered 50% of all public libraries)
• If you do not have time for any of this, please donate to the FSFE (for €120€ we can send a pack with books and other materials to hand out to a school class for readings in Italy, for €3,600 we can transform an existing translation into the movie).