Literacy

What You Wish For is now the perfect holiday gift for aspiring writers ages 13+. Readers have a chance to get their own unpublished manuscripts critiqued by renowned literary agents and authors, in an essay contest we just announced at bookwish.org/contest. A 500-word essay about a short story in What You Wish For is all that separates six winners from getting feedback on their own writing from:

We are thrilled to report that our upcoming project to build a library for AIDS orphans in Ghana has received support from a major international publisher, SAGE. Even though we haven't publicly launched the project yet, this is so encouraging that we just had to post about it. SAGE's donation will provide more than 100 books for some very needy children, targeted to their school requirements, vocational opportunities, and culture.

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 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.

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.

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.

Book Wish shipments of 1,750 pairs of reading glasses, 75 EnglishArabic dictionaries, and a few FrenchArabic 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.