A Congleton-based charity which aims to supply "much-needed" diverse and inclusive books and learning materials into classrooms has launched a crowdfunder for a local pilot project.

'Dive In' believes that education enables equality and they believe that every child should be represented within the materials accessible to them within their learning environment.

The charity has set up a pilot project to supply their books and learning materials into a few local schools within the Congleton area, in order to gather feedback.

The initial funding will provide Dive In the funds to purchase the guided reading books, any other funds would allow the charity to provide extra books for the classrooms/school library.

Dive In's crowdfunder page stated: "We know that children are eight times more likely to encounter an animal in the books they read, than a person of colour.

"We know that only 5% of children's books published have a main character that is a person of colour.

"We don't even have data relating to main characters that are disabled, and as a result, we can only assume that the numbers here are stark.

"It is not difficult to do the maths - we have a major problem in our classrooms.

"Dive In aims to address this problem by supplying much needed diverse and inclusive books and learning materials into classrooms."

Dive In believes that education enables equality and they believe that every child should be represented within the materials accessible to them within their learning environment.

The charity continued: "Our communities are becoming more diverse, and we believe that by educating our children on important topics (such as race and disability), the resulting long-term effect will be greater community cohesion and better social mobility for the minority groups within our society.

"Our aim is to ensure that as many children as possible not only have access to diverse and inclusive reading materials within their classrooms, but are encouraged to own thought leadership and participate in proactive discussion on these topics, through guided reading and the associated teacher-led learning materials.

"Research has shown that exposure to differences at a young age helps to eradicate prejudices later in life, so we want to start working with our future leaders from the earliest opportunity to breakdown the system that has been cultivating institutional racism, discrimination, prejudice and bias, to enable a better future for all.

"At present we are focussing on the topic of race. We will deliver materials on this topic for EYFS, KS1 and KS2 school children.

"We will follow this with materials on the topic of disability. At a later stage in our development, we plan to introduce further topics (at KS3 and KS4 level), for example LGBTQ+ and religion."

You can donate to Dive In's crowdfunder here.