Update: Our shipment of 1,750 pairs of reading glasses has reached the refugees in Chad! For photos and discussion, click here.

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road currently available in the Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga Camps is bumpy at best, paved with a small assortment of outdated books that are difficult for the refugees to use.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.

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. To provide nearly 70,000 Darfur refugees with broad access to books for education, mental health, and occupational training, we are asking for your help to build three libraries, one in each of the Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga Refugee Camps.

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.

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.

Update: We are currently collecting in-kind donations of school supplies for Darfuri children in refugee camps in eastern Chad, and will soon launch a section of this website to help coordinate collection activities. If you have any questions about donating supplies, please contact us. Meanwhile, you can also donate cash to be used to purchase school supplies locally in Chad on an emergency basis, as described below.