Language Inclusivity is Crosscutting

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Language Inclusivity is Crosscutting

On my first trip to Peru (roughly 50 years ago) I was too young to read, but I am certain that my parents read to me on the airplane. As I prepare to travel to Peru later this month with my wife, I am reminded of just how privileged I am to have grown up surrounded by books in both English and Spanish - and even a bilingual "Dr. Seuss Dictionary." My favorite books, however, were always story books in English -- the language I heard spoken most often in our home.

While accessibility and gender inclusivity in educational materials is finally receiving a lot of well-deserved attention, are books genuinely inclusive if they are not in a language that children know and understand well…?

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A Pandemic Pivot

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A Pandemic Pivot

While “pandemic” may be the obvious choice for 2020’s “Word of the Year,” another great option would be “pivot.” So many people have had to pivot in so many ways.

One of the ways in which WE have pivoted this past year has been with our Begin With Books project in Mali…

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Together We Can

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Together We Can

During the past few weeks, there have been times when it has felt like we’ve all decided to just take a vacation from talking and worrying about Covid-19 as we’ve focused, instead, on the #BlackLivesMatter protests and the history of systemic racism in America.

But as necessary and important as all this soul-searching and activism are, the fact of Covid-19 remains. By the end of May, the virus had been the world’s leading cause of death for almost exactly one month—having caused around a hundred thousand more deaths in 2020 than its closest lethal competitor, malaria…

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Blind Leading the Blind…? Why not!?

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Blind Leading the Blind…? Why not!?

Joyce Lopez works as the head of the Life Transformation Department at Resources for the Blind Inc. (RBI) in the Philippines. Although her siblings have moved to the United States, she remains in the country of her birth, living with her parents about forty-five minutes (by public transport) from the RBI offices in Manila and working to provide visually impaired students with the opportunity to discover their full potential. Joyce oversees the blind pastors that RBI sends to schools to work with blind children, she writes proposals, and from time to time she speaks as an advocate for the blind. When she’s not at work with RBI, she sometimes teaches computer tutorials for blind students. Joyce is a remarkable, bright young woman.

Joyce is also completely blind, and has been from birth…

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A Bridge to Other Worlds

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A Bridge to Other Worlds

Imagine for a moment that you’re a small child with a love of books. We may be biased, but we think that makes you pretty much “a small child,” period, because we believe that all children love books! Anyway, imagine we bring you, a small child, into a vast library filled with hundreds or even thousands of brightly colored books.

The colors! The pictures! The beautiful words!

You’ve heard about books. Someone has told you of the worlds these books will open up to you, so you head for the closest shelf and pluck off a promising title with an intriguing cover image of a baby cradling a giant grasshopper. What a mysterious image! …

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