Here is an exciting opportunity to make a direct and long-lasting impact on a life in crisis. Our on-the-ground partner CORD informs us that 500 reading glasses are needed for students and teachers in each of the Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga refugee camps, and 250 in local Chadian communities. Why should farsightedness be a barrier to education?

Learning English is viewed as a “road to freedom” by refugees from Darfur, says Anne Goddard, CORD’s Education Programme Manager for Chad. It is critical to their chance of enrollment in university. However, the road currently available in the Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga Camps is bumpy at best, paved with a small assortment of outdated books that are difficult for the refugees to use. Help us build them a highway by providing the well-established, familiar, and user-friendly Headway English Course that they so badly desire.

“There is a great need” for English-Arabic and French-Arabic dictionaries in refugee camps and villages in Eastern Chad, according to our on-the-ground partner CORD. For the refugees from Darfur, who view learning English as a “road to freedom,” English-Arabic dictionaries can turbo-charge their studies. For the Chadian villagers, who are enrolled in the thousands in literacy and early school programs, knowledge of French, an official language of Chad, can give them greater opportunities in life.

As time passes and the crisis in Darfur continues, an increasing number of refugees in Chad are advancing through the educational system established in the camps and reaching secondary school. Successful completion of secondary school means that they might be able to attend university and find a future outside the camps, but a simple fact stands in the way of their success: they don’t have enough textbooks.

Of all the items on the Chad Wish List, library construction has the potential to impact the most people. A library can be used by everyone in the community, young or old, in school or not, with interests as diverse as its collection.

Want to help refugees from Darfur and promote environmentally-friendly technology at the same time? Help us send 100 solar-powered CD players to refugee camps in Chad, to enable refugees studying English to listen to the audio component of their course.

Back-to-school shopping is a familiar annual ritual. Stocking up on pens and pencils, notebooks, etc., we’ve all done it and many of us probably didn’t enjoy the experience. In the refugee camps in Eastern Chad, children from Darfur only wish they could go on such shopping sprees. There is an ever-present threat of shortfalls of basic school supplies, which could interrupt their education. Help us prevent this from happening by establishing an emergency fund for more than 24,000 students.