There's this moment that happens most nights in our house.
Archie picks a few books, climbs into bed and we read together. He's almost five now, and he's starting to recognise words. You can actually see it on his face when something clicks. That little spark.
It's one of my favourite parts of the day. Genuinely.
And lately this nightly ritual has been making me think.
Archie gets to take this for granted. Books on his shelf. Someone to sit with him. The space and the time to just... read. And learn. And to build his imagination. But this is something a lot of kids actually don't have; this ease of access to books. And the kids who miss out on reading early don't just fall behind at school — they miss out on opportunities that ripple out for the rest of their lives.
That sat with me. And it sent me looking for a charity we could actually get behind this April, in honour of International Children's Book Day on April 2nd.
I wanted something real. Something with genuine outcomes. And I found it.
Meet Room to Read.
Room to Read was founded in 1999 when a guy named John Wood visited schools in Nepal and was floored — not by the lack of enthusiasm, but by the lack of everything else. The teachers cared. The kids wanted to learn. There just weren't books. Or libraries. Or resources of any kind.
So he quit his job and went out and built something to change that.
To date, Room to Read has invested over US$1 billion into literacy and education for more than 50 million children across 28 countries. They've earned a four-star Charity Navigator rating 17 times running. An independent jury of 194 experts ranked them number one for impact and scalability out of 3,500 organisations.
Not a small operation.
They focus specifically on the two moments where kids are most at risk of falling behind or dropping out: learning to read in primary school, and staying in school through secondary — particularly for girls.
That second part really resonated with me.
Two thirds of the world's 800 million illiterate people are women and girls.
Not because they don't want to learn. Because the access, the support, and the encouragement simply isn't there.
Room to Read's Girls' Education Program works directly with adolescent girls — giving them mentoring, life skills, financial literacy, and the kind of sustained guidance that helps them stay in school and make their own choices about their futures.
The CEO of Room to Read, Dr. Geetha Murali, is herself the daughter of a mother who refused to be married off at 13. That one act of defiance changed everything — her mother's trajectory, her own, and now the trajectories of millions of girls across the world through the organisation she leads.
That's the ripple effect of education.
And then there's the Bali connection.
This is the part that made it feel like more than a coincidence.
Room to Read has been running programs right here in Bali and across Indonesia since 2016 — building school libraries, publishing children's books in local languages, training teachers.
You may not know this, but Ben and I are living and building Strapsicle here in Bali right now. Archie even plays with local kids most afternoons.
And so it was an obvious choice. One that felt less like charity, and more like helping build our community.
So here's what we're doing.
This April, for every order placed on strapsicle.com, we're donating $1 to Room to Read.
Room to Read estimates it costs around $1–2 to provide a child with a year's worth of reading resources. Which means every order has the potential to put books, tools, and support into the hands of a child who needs them.
One order. One child. One year of books.
We'll be sharing updates throughout April — and at the end of the month, we'll let you know exactly how much we raised together.
Shop in April. Change a story. 📚
