Earlier this week, Dave Limp, the Senior Vice President of Amazon Devices and Services, had announced that Amazon is starting a Kindle Reading Fund. Like its name suggests, this is a program designed to promote (digital) reading worldwide. In a short blog post, Limp explained that Amazon was always striving to provide its customers with all of the possible books in the world but has admitted that the company is aware not everyone has the necessary tools to benefit from Amazon’s services. That is where the Kindle Reading Fund comes in as this program will handle large donations of Kindle Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers, and—naturally—Kindle eBooks. The current plan is to send donations all over the world which Amazon is hoping to accomplish through four separate programs within the fund itself.
The first one of these programs encompasses Amazon’s collaboration with Worldreader. Namely, this non-profit organization will help Amazon organize donations of thousands of Kindle e-readers in the developing world. The second one will focus on local schools and libraries to which Amazon has already started donating its e-readers and Fire tablets in an effort to further improve average literacy in developed countries. The third program of the Kindle Reading Fund is focused on hospitals and non-profit organizations and has actually already started in 2015 under wraps. In the last 12 months, Amazon has donated its consumer electronics to Rainier Scholars, Mary’s Place, and Seattle Children’s Hospital and is now planning to expand its efforts to similar institutions outside of Seattle. The final part of the program is focused on Amazon’s collaboration with the National Parent Teacher Association. Namely, the PTA has recently kickstarted a so-called Family Reading Experience program whose goal is to help families get more involved in the reading practices of their children. Just like the other cases, Amazon will logistically assist the PTA.
Limp stated that all of this is just the beginning of Amazon’s global charity efforts and has noted that there’s still plenty of room for the Kindle Reading Fund to grow, hinting that Amazon will release more information on this noble endeavor in the near future.