2008 is the United Nations International Year of Languages. Unesco is the lead agency for organising celebratory events, under the slogan, “Languages Matter!”

The Little Hands books are going to help to contribute to making the Year significant. They are now in 24 languages, and the African Union is set to hold an event in Addis Ababa where books in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Amharic will be displayed and then donated to children who speak these languages. Other ways for getting the books in appropriate languages distributed widely to children in Africa are being explored.

If you have ideas, please share them with us!

Donations have been received from:

Knowledge iTrust, Chen Wang and Christina Kirshbaum to donate sets of books in Kinyarwanda, French, Kiswahili and English to be donated to children in Burundi and Rwanda via Concern USA.

The Chapel of Our Saviour in Colorado Springs, USA with the help of Judy Casey

Readers of Boeke Insig Magazine, who are supporting our drive to get books into the hands of young children.

Thank you!

All young children love stories – they love being told them, and they love looking at picture books with someone special. In South Africa, a child who doesn’t speak English, or maybe Afrikaans, is often denied the pleasure of engaging with storybooks in their own language. In other parts of Africa, though it may be French or Portuguese rather than English, the situation is similar. And it is not an empty pleasure: story reading stimulates complex rich language and creativity – essential for healthy learning. It forms part of the elusive ‘culture of reading’ that is made up from all the apparently ‘natural’ daily activities with print that are taken for granted by those who have them.

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