Tough Guy Book Club is a club for men who don't read enough. Or men who want to read more. Or men who read too much and need somebody to talk to about all the amazing and interesting shit they've been reading... look, you get it. Reading is involved.

So, since we believe reading is fundamentally a good thing and people should do more of it, any cause that encourages literacy is one we can get behind. Imagine if you were a kid who didn't feel capable or comfortable opening a book. Worse than that, imagine if you couldn't even get access to books where you live. Even worse than that, imagine if the few books you could access weren't about stuff you knew or cared about, or weren't written in the language you speak at home.

That would suck. Someone should do something about that.

Enter the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Founded in 2004 as the Riverbend Readers Challenge, the ILF aims to improve literacy in remote communities across Australia. Since 2011 they've worked with over 400 communities, gifted 636,000 books and published 143 books reflecting 26 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.

Compared to them, we're pretty useless. TGBC is mostly about going to the pub and arguing about Hemingway. But we're a powerful fundraising network when we want to be. Our entire operation is basically funded by Bunnings sausage sizzles, and we've run dedicated fundraising drives for emergencies, individual goons and charitable causes.

So in 2020, Tough Guy Book Club raised $8,507 for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, as part of National Reconciliation Week (May 27 thru June 3) and National Sorry Day (May 26).

See, as men who read a lot, we also believe in apologising when you fuck up and trying to make things better. But that's another story.