Darfur Refugees and Locals in Eastern Chad

The Book Wish Foundation is excited to announce our first project, a combination of institutional and individual aid to provide reading relief to Darfur refugees and locals in Eastern Chad. Through our on-the-ground partner CORD, we will reach the Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga refugee camps, with more than 60,000 residents — 20,000 of them students — and 18 nearby Chadian villages, where more than 19,000 people are enrolled in primary school, pre-school, or literacy programs. The project’s Wish List contains requests for English as a Second Language materials, 1,750 pairs of reading glasses, the construction of four libraries, 50 sets of official secondary school textbooks, 150 English-Arabic and 50 French-Arabic dictionaries, 100 solar-powered CD players, and an emergency fund for school supplies for all the students and schools.

We are including Chadian villagers in this project because their communities are strained by hosting refugees, because harmony between them and refugees is important to stability along the Chad/Darfur border, and because their enormous needs (Chad is the fifth poorest country in the world, and this is a remote part of Chad) are being overlooked by international donors. Our partner CORD manages education programs in the villages and the camps, and advises us on the specific needs of both populations.

We are calling on all book lovers, education advocates, and proponents of English as a Second Language to support this project. This is your opportunity to deliver targeted aid to people affected by the Darfur crisis.

You can help older students master the prerequisites for university education by giving them Headway English language course material, CD players to listen to the audio components of the course, and secondary school textbooks from the official Sudanese curriculum. They are so eager to advance to higher education that some have risked their lives returning to Darfur to take primary school exams and study. Now, there is the possibility that students from the camps who pass suitable secondary school exams might be able to attend Juba University in southern Sudan. You can help turn that possibility into a reality.

You can ensure that the schools — whether indoors, in grass hangars, or in the desert sand — in Bredjing, Treguine, and Gaga Camps, and in the 18 nearby Chadian villages of Abougkni, Barde, Bahkita, Bredjing, Faguire, Fodji, Hadjer Hadid, Kadjala, Kinouane, Kodolok Koundjan, Korkoguine, Koundoubla, Lira, Louma, Mobouguine, N’gourkoudji, Rataye, and Sira remain open and that their students are able to learn, by helping us establish an emergency fund to pay for basic school supplies like pencils, notebooks, and chalk, which sometimes run out. Now that education is freely available, the Darfurians and Chadians are enrolling both boys and girls at young ages and in large numbers, but they cannot afford adequate supplies themselves and in-kind donations sometimes arrive late.

You can extend the learning opportunities of all residents of the camps and villages, whether young or old, in school or not, by helping us build and stock four brick libraries, one in each of the camps and one in the main village of Hadjer Hadid. Together, we can provide an infrastructure of knowledge to support the educational and occupational aspirations of entire communities.

You can enlarge the pool of knowledge that is accessible by providing English-Arabic and French-Arabic dictionaries. The English-Arabic dictionaries will also help the refugees preparing for higher education to learn English, the language in which studies are conducted, which they view as a “road to freedom.”

You can prevent farsightedness from being a barrier to education by helping us send 500 pairs of reading glasses to each of the camps and 250 to the Chadian villages. Every contribution or pair of glasses you send us will help someone literally see a way out of the crisis.

The Book Wish Foundation gives you the opportunity to make an earmarked donation towards any of the items on this Wish List, so you can support the forms of reading relief that matter most to you. Please follow the links below to read about the items in greater detail.