ESL

Today is the first ever International Day of the Girl Child (UN announcement). This year's theme, ending child marriage, is directly related to our refugee camp library project. As you may know, in the Darfuri refugee camps in eastern Chad, formal education ends at primary school. Because girls do not have an opportunity to attend secondary school in the camps, they are at a greater risk for very early marriage.

Our most exciting news ever! Click here to read the details of the first refugee camp library funded by our charity anthology, What You Wish For. More than 19,000 Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad will gain access to books targeted to their interests and reading skills!

More recognition for What You Wish For! Our Darfur charity anthology is included in the Best Story Collection category of the 2011 Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Young Adult Top Ten or so Fiction Titles! Thank you, Pennsylvania, and congratulations to our fantastic authors!

What You Wish For is available now wherever books are sold, and one online bookseller, Better World Books, will even donate their profits to our refugee camp library project when you buy the book from them.

What You Wish For, our collection of short stories and poems raising funds for Darfuri refugee camp libraries, has been nominated for the 2013 Isinglass Teen Read Award in New Hampshire! The award, given annually since 2001, is decided based on votes by grade 7 and 8 students in New Hampshire. Prior to voting, New Hampshire libraries encourage students to read the nominated books. How exciting to know that many more young readers will learn about the cause! And what a great way to recognize the wonderful writing of our generous contributing authors. Thank you, New Hampshire librarians and middle school students!

Full list of Isinglass nominees.
More information about the award.

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 Readers have a chance to get their own unpublished manuscripts critiqued by renowned literary agents and authors, in an essay contest we just announced at bookwish.org/contest.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.

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.

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.

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.