While I admire the cause, I doubt the effectiveness of giving books to children. If you were born in a ghetto, by now you'd be either shot or in jail, bro, and no amount of books given to you while in a tender age would be likely to change that, I am afraid. ;( You turned out the way you are because your mom taught you to read. And beaten (figuratively) into you the concept that reading is cool. And your entire environment was much more conductive to reading then, say, drug pushing. I am not saying that poor kids are incapable of greatness. But I do believe that their environment makes them much less likely to succeed (and getting presents in the form of stupid stacks of paper instead of toy guns won't help much, if at all)