Paul Gilbertson

In 2007, Children's Book Author, Paul Gilbertson, and his wife, Chris, wanted to find a way to help children who are unfortunate victims of crises. When the little town of Gays Mills, Wisconsin was flooded that same year, Paul jumped at the chance to try and improve the situation for all the children who were affected by the disaster. Paul and his daughter packed up the car with boxes of children's' books and started their journey. A few hours later, the two arrived at the scene only to be greeted by yellow police tape, first responders and emergency vehicles. Although this first attempt to "Bring a smile to the face of a child in the time of need" was not successful, it was just the beginning. On the drive home that day, Paul realized in order to REACH a Child at the time of crisis, he needed to team up with the people who arrive at the unfortunate crisis first. Out of this experience the R.E.A.C.H. a Child "B.A.C.K. Packets" program was born, this initiative centers around providing approximately 10-12 various children's books to officers and first responders in a red backpack for them to give to children that they see at the scene of an accident, fire, domestic disturbance or in other traumatic situations.Currently these red backpacks are in over 15k squad cars and ambulances. Within our first two years we have donated over 175k children's books to children in crisis.