Meet Our Founder: Charity Harris
Charity Harris, known to young readers as award-winning children’s author C.M. Harris, has spent much of her life understanding what it means to move through a world that does not always know how to see people beyond their differences.
The Work Is Just Beginning
Born with a lifelong neuromuscular disability and now a wheelchair user, Charity has experienced being overlooked, underestimated, and defined by assumptions before people had the opportunity to know her abilities, ideas, or ambition.
Those experiences shaped the way she sees children—particularly the child who feels different, unheard, underestimated, or absent from the stories around them.
But Charity’s connection to children began long before she became an author.
For more than a decade, she worked directly with children, teaching and supporting young learners day after day. That experience gave her an intimate view of how children process differences, ask questions, build confidence, and develop the beliefs they carry about themselves and others.
She learned that the right message, delivered early enough, can stay with a child for years.
One Book Became a Larger Mission
In 2019, Charity wrote What If We Were All The Same! to create the kind of children’s story she wished had existed when she was young.
The message was simple but deeply personal: our differences are not something to fear or erase. They are part of what makes each person valuable.
The book reached more than 20,000 readers in its first year and opened doors Charity had never imagined when she first wrote the manuscript. Her work has since reached children and educators through schools, national organizations, and children’s media, while her growing body of books continues to explore inclusion, empathy, kindness, disability representation, and social-emotional development.
Charity went on to build Purple Diamond Press Inc., an independent publishing company committed to meaningful literature and stories with purpose.
But as the books reached more classrooms and communities, another issue became increasingly clear.
Access.
A Meaningful Book Cannot Help a Child Who Never Receives It
Charity had seen what could happen when children connected with the right story.
She had watched children raise their hands during school visits. She had listened to their questions.
She had seen young readers recognize themselves in a character and watched conversations about differences become conversations about belonging.
She also understood that not every classroom, school, or family has equal access to meaningful books and literacy experiences.
That realization became the foundation for Charity’s Readers For Tomorrow.
The nonprofit was created to help expand access to books and literacy experiences that encourage children to read, think, connect, and recognize value in themselves and others.
Charity’s Readers For Tomorrow is a growing organization. Its story is still being written. Partnerships are being built, funds are being raised, and programs are being developed with a clear purpose:
to help meaningful books reach more children.
Building What She Once Needed
For Charity, this mission cannot be separated from her own life.
She knows what it feels like to search for representation and not find it. She knows what it means to enter spaces where others make assumptions about what you can accomplish. And she understands how powerful it can be when a child encounters a message that says, clearly and without hesitation:
You belong in the story, too.
Today, Charity is an author, publisher, disability advocate, and nonprofit founder. Each role grew from the same belief—that children deserve books and experiences that help them better understand themselves, appreciate others, and imagine what is possible.
She built the stories she once needed.
Now, through Charity’s Readers For Tomorrow, she is working to help more children access them.
“I know what it feels like to be overlooked. My mission is to help build a future where fewer children grow up feeling invisible.”
— Charity Harris, Founder
The Work Is Just Beginning
Charity’s Readers For Tomorrow is building its next chapter through community support, school connections, literacy partnerships, and individuals and organizations that believe access to meaningful books matters.
We invite you to help us build it.