Literacy

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!

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.

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.

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.

Book Wish shipments of 1,750 pairs of reading glasses, 75 English<->Arabic dictionaries, and a few French<->Arabic dictionaries are in Chad and en route to the refugee camps and villages. They have been in the country for months, but have been delayed for logistical reasons. Full details will be reported once they have arrived and we have photos.

If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, this is a great opportunity to hear firsthand about aid work in Darfur refugee camps, especially educational and reading-related aid that can help rebuild lives.

On Monday, January 12, 2009, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM, at the Library of Congress, our partner CORD's CEO, Brian Wakley, will be speaking about "WAGING PEACE: building new life after conflict for the victims of Darfur."

We've just launched a (post-)holiday campaign to raise funds for library construction, English textbooks, and primary school textbooks for the Darfuris in the Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga refugee camps in eastern Chad. Here's how it works: we want you to count the books you received as presents this year and donate $1 per book. You can choose how the money is spent and read more details at holiday.bookwish.org.

Share this with everyone, especially people you gave books to! A few dollars can have a big impact on a refugee's life, when spent on books.