#9 Our AllWithBooks Model

Making books available to every child in the world is a gigantic goal. But just like if you’re going to eat something big, you need to start one bite at a time.

Our first “bite” is to focus on making books available to the children of Katab, a small Mayan community in southern Mexico. After a couple of months testing and trying multiple things in order to find the best way to generate the most positive impact, we decided to implement two models into our product. Nevertheless, we will continue innovating and finding new models to achieve our goal in the most sustainable and net positive way.

1 — Sharing Royalties

As our goal has to do with books, our products are books. Our books are filled with stories told by the people from Katab, which makes them co-authors of the book. This way we can ensure they received 10% of every book sold and create a fund with their royalties. The first action that the fund will be used for is to build a library. Later, the community will have the ability to decide what educational program to fund with their royalties. Whether that is restoring their school, buying school uniforms, or teacher training, it will be a decision for them to make. By having ownership in the book, we can secure a legal perpetuity as long as the book keeps moving by sales, a licensing model, or other future actions.

2 — One Book for Any Book You Choose

For every book purchase, the customer can decide what book will go into the library in Katab. We will then buy that book and add it to the library. Building the library will be the easy part, but filling it with great books will be a big challenge and huge responsibility. Having the support of a diversity of customers around the world is the only way to secure having an amazing collection of books. Plus, it is a great way for them to become more engaged with the community and create a cultural exchange. Customers can learn about the world of Katab, and the people from Katab can learn about the world of the customers with their favorite book!

At the moment we are working on finding ways to generate jobs for the people in Katab in the library. The most obvious is searching for librarians, but a library can create other endless opportunities.

The next “bites” will be to co-write another book with a different community where books are inexistent and work together to tell their story. After that, we’ll work with countless other communities until we help make books available to every child in the world.

I believe that if we can make this collection of books possible, the world will be a better place because children who don’t currently have access to books will now have access to read and be inspired. Reading can inspire them to become great future leaders, and children who have access to books can read about other cultures, allowing them to be more empathic, which will help create a better future world.

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DoGoodFirst is a journey on how to build businesses that make the world a better place. Nothing is written in stone, and we know we are far away to making it fully right, but we are prepared to take the journey.

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