Donate a brick to build a refugee camp library for just $2.

Major Sponsors

  • Oxford University Press
  • Air France
  • AltusLumen
  • Hippocrene Books
  • Northern Virginia Optometric Society
  • Sight Station
  • PRVAIL - Partners in Restoring Vision and Improving Lives
  • Smart Eyes, LLC
  • Hilco
  • Peepers Fun Reading Glasses
  • For Eyes Optical
  • Astucci
  • Davis Vision
  • University of Toronto English Language Program
  • ClearVision Optical
  • Equation: The Eco-Friendly Eyewear Company

Chad Wish List

Donate a Brick to Build a Refugee Camp Library

For just $2 you can make a tangible and long-lasting difference in the lives of thousands of Darfuri refugees. For $2 you can fund one of the 5,000 bricks we need to build a library in a refugee camp in Chad. Whether you give one brick or one hundred, you will be making a real difference. Please visit our new library builder site to participate. You can leave a message for the public and donate in honor of your favorite author or a special book lover in your life. Tell your friends and, together, we can make it to 5,000 and build a library.

Reading Glasses Reach Refugees Despite Carjacking Attempt!

Major news from eastern Chad! Our shipment of 1,750 pairs of reading glasses has reached Bredjing Refugee Camp! This despite an attempted carjacking on May 26 en route from Hadjer Hadid to Abeche, Chad, which our partner CORD's drivers narrowly escaped. With shots fired at point blank range, it is fair to say that the brave aid workers have risked their lives in delivering the glasses to the refugees. We are tremendously thankful that they were not harmed, and inspired by the incredible photos below of the glasses being distributed.

Poetry Book Orders Matched with Donations by Publisher

Avalon Press, a publisher in the UK, is supporting our campaign to build a refugee camp library for 20,000-30,000 Darfuris by donating for every order they receive for Larry Kuechlin's book of poetry, "Along a Ruined Sea." For orders made directly through their website through February 6, Avalon Press will donate two bricks to help build the library, one in the purchaser's name and a matching brick from themselves. For poetry lovers, this could be a great opportunity to help some of the world's neediest readers. Click here to order directly from Avalon Press, or here to read more about "Along a Ruined Sea." Thanks, Avalon Press, for helping us build a library for refugees!

Refugee English Program Continues to Grow

About 2,000 Darfuris are now enrolled in refugee-organized English classes in three refugee camps in eastern Chad, nearly double the number from a year ago. The classes have grown dramatically, from an initial 400, since we started supporting the refugees with Headway ESL textbooks from Oxford University Press. See video from the classes below and learn about our plans to expand this highly successful program.

Solar Lighting Showdown

Video below. Our quest for portable, rugged, solar-rechargeable lighting for refugee camp and village classrooms in Chad is down to a two-light showdown. The two contenders are 1) a new lighting system designed in partnership with electronics manufacturer AltusLumen and 2) the winner of our prior field tests of off-the-shelf equipment, the SOLUX-LED-50.

Videos Showing Our Impact

Watch videos below. To help demonstrate the impact our donors are having, and to show what is really happening in education in the refugee camps in eastern Chad, we sent a Flip camcorder and memory stick to our field partner CORD. The many videos that came back far exceed our expectations, and we'll be sharing them gradually over the next several weeks.

Bibliotarian: Good for You and Us

You can now help Book Wish whenever you buy books online, and we'll help you find the lowest prices in return. Just start all your book shopping at bibliotarian.org, our new fast book price comparison service. Bibliotarian can find you the lowest prices from Amazon, AbeBooks, Alibris, Half.com, etc., and we (and, optionally, another charity of your choice) can benefit from the affiliate revenue provided by the bookseller. It's a win-win situation.

See Who You Are Helping

If you donated to provide English textbooks for refugee-organized English classes in eastern Chad, or if you are considering supporting the English classes, here is a photo you should see. Taken in May 2009, it shows several hundred of the English students from Bredjing Refugee Camp. These are some of the Darfuris we are directly helping.

Solar Lights and Dictionaries Distributed

Our recent shipment of 1,750 pairs of reading glasses to Darfur refugee camps and villages in eastern Chad also included a variety of solar lights and bilingual English/Arabic and French/Arabic dictionaries – all tools needed to support reading. Below are photos showing the arrival of this aid and some of the Darfuris who will play a critical role in integrating it into the camps' educational system. For a detailed discussion of the ongoing field testing of the solar lights, with videos, click here.

Attention Costco Members

If you read about us in the July 2009 issue of Costco Connection, Book Wish Foundation has a challenge for you. Collectively, we are calling on the Costco community to help build a 5,000-book library in a Darfur refugee camp in eastern Chad. With a circulation of nearly 8 million, only a small fraction of the Connection's readers would need to contribute to enable us to break ground on a new library. The cost is about $10,000 for the 49' x 23' brick building, and if the Costco community can raise that, we'll do the rest to furnish the library with targeted books to improve the lives of about 20,000-30,000 refugees, especially the children, who are literate but have no children's books to read.

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Book Wish Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity. EIN: 26-1285319 Foundation business documents
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