TRANSFORMING CHILDREN’S LIVES THROUGH LITERACY
Topic Heroes® was founded by Lucy Swanston, who as a mum of three boys was struggling to keep them engaged with reading and writing; she was determined to find a creative way to inspire them. She realised she was not alone in this struggle.
1MILLION CHILDREN AGED 5-18 DO NOT OWN A BOOK!*
187,000 CHILDREN DID NOT MEET THE EXPECTED STANDARD FOR LITERACY IN 2022/23**
INSUFFICIENT LITERACY SKILLS COST SOCIETY AN ESTIMATED £830 MILLION FOR EACH COHORT OF FIVE-YEAR-OLDS**
Richard Pepper—founder of the greetings card giant funkypigeon.com—came on board as the Chairman of Topic Heroes®. As a dyslexic, Richard understood the struggle and is proud to support a charity that is close to his heart.
Together, Lucy and Richard carefully selected a board of trustees and volunteers to help develop the idea and achieve its mission: to provide Topic Heroes® FREE to every Primary-School-aged child in the UK.
CAPTURING CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION IN YOUNG PEOPLE
Topic Heroes® is an exciting way to capture creativity, ignite the imagination and engage children with writing through topic-based learning. A learning adventure like no other, it starts online and finishes on the bookshelf!
Topic Heroes® has been developed with leading literacy academics in line with the National Curriculum and offers a wide range of topics to choose from such as Monsters, Sport, Healthy Eating, Victorians, Climate Change and much more.
Children have so much fun on their topic-learning journey. Creative topic templates are easy to use and come with cool graphics and images to choose from. Children can even upload their images to help make pages their own.
The brilliant thing about Topic Heroes® is that every child who completes a topic is rewarded for their hard work with their very own professionally printed and personalised topic book to enjoy and share with friends and family.
THE TOPIC HEROES® JOURNEY SO FAR
Over the last couple of years, we’ve come a long way. Lucy’s vision became a reality; the software was built, tested and developed and with the support of Andy Goodwyn—Professor of Literacy at the University of Bedfordshire—and his team, we were able to develop to create a wide range of topics and complete a number of successful pilots in local schools.
And we picked up some recognition along the way!The next leg of our journey is To start working towards our mission of making Topic Heroes available to all Primary-School-aged children in the UK. To do this we need your help!
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Through your donations, you can support this vital cause and make a significant impact on future generations. Together, we can make a difference, one book at a time.
For more info, visit www.topicheroes.co.uk
You can also discover us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/topic-heroes/
Sources: National Literacy Trust 2023* / Pro Bono Economics and National Literacy Trust 2023**