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Transform Your Kid's Books- Project Gender Balance

With each kit, you can transform your child's picture books into healthy, gender balanced stories.

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Transform Your Kid's Books- Project Gender Balance

Transform Your Kid's Books- Project Gender Balance

Transform Your Kid's Books- Project Gender Balance

Transform Your Kid's Books- Project Gender Balance

Transform Your Kid's Books- Project Gender Balance

With each kit, you can transform your child's picture books into healthy, gender balanced stories.

With each kit, you can transform your child's picture books into healthy, gender balanced stories.

With each kit, you can transform your child's picture books into healthy, gender balanced stories.

With each kit, you can transform your child's picture books into healthy, gender balanced stories.

Lauren Beven
Lauren Beven
Lauren Beven
Lauren Beven
1 Campaign |
Bellingham, United States
$151 USD 5 backers
12% of $1,254 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
Choose your Perk
Balance More Books- Donate 1!
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Balance More Books- Donate 1!

$10 USD $14 USD (28% off)
Est. Shipping
November 2018
3 out of 20 of claimed
Balance-My-Books Kit (0-3 yr)

Balance-My-Books Kit (0-3 yr)

$6 USD $7 USD (14% off)
Est. Shipping
November 2018
0 claimed
Balance-My-Books Kit (4-8 yr)

Balance-My-Books Kit (4-8 yr)

$8 USD $9 USD (11% off)
Est. Shipping
November 2018
0 claimed
Overview
The world is full of both He and She… Your child’s books should be, too. And yet publishers continue to print stories with mostly He characters. We started Project Gender Balance to put the power back into the hands of parents and educators. Each kit contains stickers to transform your child’s picture books by replacing pronouns with He/She, etc. You can choose every time you open the book and personalize the story for your child. You can teach your child: He and She are both important!

Welcome to this exciting, important project!

I’m Lauren- linguist, language teacher, parent, and founder of Project Gender Balance.

Here is how it all began back in 2017.

We started reading picture books to our daughter, most of the same books that we had read to our son a few years earlier. Suddenly, something clicked and we started noticing a lack of She characters. How could we not have noticed this before? We read the same books to our son and it had never occurred to us!

We began analyzing children's books and talking about gender bias with parents, educators, publishers and authors. It turns out that this is a widespread problem with very real consequences. In bestselling children's books in the USA, 79% of central characters are He. Most children today spend their most formative years reading books that say He is important and He is a part of the world, but these books also say She is not nearly as important as He. 

Like most parents, we couldn’t easily replace the books we were reading with more balanced stories, and we still wanted to hold on to our picture book collection. Winnie The Pooh, The Gruffalo, The Very Hungry Caterpillar… We wanted to find a way to keep reading these books, keep the integrity of the stories, and open up the gender choice for each reader.

And so the concept of He/She stickers was born. By resetting the pronouns with He/She, you open up the story to include both He and She characters. You can even ask your child: Would you like Winnie the Pooh to be He or She today? We have spent months creating prototypes and field testing our solution with children and their families. These pronoun stickers really work!

Once a book has been gender balanced with a Project Gender Balance kit, the reader can open it up, get the basic idea by looking at the “Dear Reader” sticker on the inside cover, and then start reading. It’s that easy! We have created a sticker size, shape, and style that is easy to apply, blends well into the surrounding text, and helps empower children and adults to create the story as they go.

Our Goal

In order to launch Project Gender Balance, we are asking for backers to purchase 200 Balance-My-Books Kits, raising a total of $1254. These costs fall into four categories: equipment, materials, labor, and crowdfunding fees.

Equipment $450

The individual pronoun stickers are too small (less than ¼ inch square) for most commercial sticker production companies.  Therefore, we will produce the stickers in house using a reputable home cutting machine. We also require a precise paper trimmer to cut separate sticker sheets. 

Materials $450

To produce one Balance-My-Books kit, all of these materials are required: sticker paper, printer cartridges, card stock paper, envelopes and postage. We have selected recycled, biodegradable paper products in commitment to a sustainable future. 

Labor $150

To produce and assemble 200 kits, we have estimated 3 minutes of labor per kit. Labor is costed at $15/hour.

Crowdfunding Fees $144

Indiegogo has an 8% platform fee with transaction fees of 30c per purchase. 

Your Kit

Every backer will receive a kit to gender balance up to 8 picture books. 

Balance-My-Books kit for shorter picture books: ​$6

  • Includes 275 pronoun stickers and 8 Dear Reader stickers
  • Choice of pronoun type
  • For children 0-3 years old 

Balance-My-Books kit for longer picture books: $8

  • Includes over 400 pronoun stickers and 8 Dear Reader stickers
  • Choice of pronoun type 
  • For children 4-8 years old

With each kit, we are offering your choice of pronoun: He/She Edition, She/He Edition, They Edition, She Edition and Zie Edition. (Note: They Edition Kits also include verb stickers "are", "were", etc.) These kits make great presents- Get a selection of different editions to best suit that special kid in your life!

The Impact

We have a solution to counter the gender bias in bestselling children's books. When a book has been gender balanced with our pronoun stickers, both He and She characters become central in the story. In fact, gender becomes less consequential. This has a huge ripple effect on how children see themselves and others in the world. And when enough people use pronoun stickers in their books, publishers will see the profitability of making the change from He to He/She.

Project Gender Balance’s founder Lauren Beven is a linguist, language teacher and parent. She has a deep understanding of how language shapes our perception of the world around us. Thanks to her expertise in applied linguistics and her work towards gender equity, Project Gender Balance has the potential to turn the tide of gender bias in children’s books.

By choosing to back our project, you are showing the world that He and She are both important—in children’s books, and in our modern world. 

Our Timeline

After a year of research, data collection, interviews, and testing, Project Gender Balance is now in the prototype stage. With your support, we will be able to move into full production.

There are challenges and risks in every project, but we are confident that we will overcome them. The equipment involved in production has a trusted reputation, the materials are widely available, and the software compatibility between devices has already been guaranteed. In addition, our team has combined expertise in linguistics, technology, software, and design.

We anticipate a smooth production run at the close of this campaign, and we expect to deliver the product to our backers on time as promised.

Other Ways You Can Help

Project Gender Balance is about changing the gender bias in children’s books.

If you can’t contribute financially, no problem! We would still appreciate your support in:

  • Sharing our campaign through social media
  • Using the Indiegogo share tools on this site
  • Talking to others about the lack of She central characters in bestselling books
  • Making an effort to show the world that He and She are both important—in your choice of books and media, in the workplace, and in your everyday actions!
  • Visit www.projectgenderbalance.com 

 

 

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