In 2007 the co-founders of Telephone and Soup, Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg, lived in Mali where we came to care deeply about local language issues.
They founded Local Language Literacy in 2008 and for their first project raised enough money to print nearly 1600 books.
Most of the school day in West Africa is taught in French, then students go home and live the rest of their lives in a different language like Bamanankan or Wolof.
Being able to speak and read French is a valuable skill in this region, but having the opportunity to learn in the language in which you dream/bargain/joke is essential to any student’s success and sense of self-worth.
LLL’s goal is to get books written in (or translated to) local languages into the hands of students at no cost to them.
This January they will return to West Africa to document the results of that first project in Mali and to begin a new one in the neighboring country of Senegal where the school system faces similar language issues.
They are asking for donations, that will be used to fund specifically the translation and printing costs of this still developing project. For reference, the previous project’s cost per book was $3.
You can make a tax deductible donation to LLL three ways:
–Write a check made out to Local Language Literacy Inc and send it to our offices at 515 8th St. 3R, Brooklyn, NY 11215.
–Make a donation online on our website: LocalLanguageLiteracy.org
–Make a donation online using the Facebook app Causes
Telephone and Soup is the name of Casey and Steven’s book/art/zine/stuff operation. Most of it they make together. Generally the pictures come from Steven, the words Casey. They are from Brooklyn and D.C. respectively. They’ve set up camp all over the world– from China to Mali to Morocco– but are currently Brooklynites.