Foundation Business

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.

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.

Book Wish Foundation is excited to join a partnership delivering educational aid to prepare future leaders of reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Spearheaded by the Michael Scott Mater Foundation, the project focuses on Dhi Qar University in Nasiriyah. Book Wish will provide English as a Second Language material to Dhi Qar, building on our experience in Chad and our sponsorship from leading publisher Oxford University Press.

Librairie du Liban Publishers, based in Lebanon, have provided samples of two of their French-Arabic/Arabic-French dictionaries to help us find the most appropriate material for French literacy classes in villages in eastern Chad. The Al-Kamel de Poche and Mini Al-Kamel bilingual dictionaries, both by Dr. Youssof M. Reda, will be sent to Chad in our next shipment. Literacy teachers on the ground will then be able to assess their usefulness for that specific population.