“The author James Baldwin once said that, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” Read enough and you will find yourself in someone else’s words. Read a little more and you might find yourself not in the story of another human, but in the story of another animal.”
The Gorilla Foundation is proud to announce our partnership with Worldreader <a href="http:// http://www.worldreader.org/ “>www.worldreader.org
Worldreader is on a mission to bring digital books to every child and her family, so that they can improve their lives.
Worldreader is working to Create a Literate World. Literacy is transformative: it increases earning potential, decreases inequality, improves health outcomes and breaks the cycle of poverty (UNESCO). Yet there are 740 million illiterate people in this world and 250 million children of primary school age who lack basic reading and writing skills (UNESCO). Books are necessary for the development of these skills, and still 50% of schools in Africa have few or no books at all (SACMEQ II).
The Gorilla Foundation believes that ‘Conservation through Communication’ and the telling of our stories changes people’s hearts and minds and creates protectors out of poachers.
Koko’s Kitten and Michael’s Dream, are the true stories which together paint a terribly familiar portrait of sorrow in the aftermath of tragedy. In the first book we meet Koko, the Gorilla, who takes gentle care of a tiny kitten she names All Ball. When All Ball is hit by a car she is grief stricken. In the second we meet Michael who, when asked about his mother, uses American Sign Language to describe losing her to violence.
Following the pilot study we conducted in Cameroon as part of our Conservation through Communication program we were able to document how exposure to the stories changed how children and the adults around them changed their thinking about gorillas.
By adding our two books to the Worldreader collection we will be able to bring these two amazing books to so many more readers, expanding our reach and building greater empathy and understanding everywhere.
