This is a guest post by Samara Alazar, one of volunteers about her experience leading a project to fundraise for locally printed books and distribute them in Ethiopia. Over the winter break of 2022, I traveled to Ethiopia. My goal was increasing literacy amongst underprivileged children. I have been working with Open Hearts Big Dreams […]
Spreading Book Joy in Ethiopia Read More »
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Yoseph Ayalew phone: 251 965 696 969 / 911 227 650 / email: yosephopenheartbigdreams@gmail.com Ellenore Angelidis phone: 425-295-8841 / email: ellenore@openheartsbigdreams.org IBBY Ethiopia and Open Hearts Big Dreams Announce Exciting New International Developments March 2024 – The Ethiopian Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY Ethiopia) and Open
My name is Nadine Roose. I am 17 years old and I am a senior at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California. My mom is Ethiopian, and my dad is Dutch and almost every summer since I was 5, my family and I have visited Ethiopia. I always stay with my grandparents in Addis
Connecting to Roots and Giving Back Through Children’s Books Read More »
We have a wonderful collaboration with Pelargos that helps bring Greek and Amharic versions of some our favorite books to kids in Greece. Below is a translation, thank you Michael Angelidis, from a recent article in Greece about this initiative. For those that read Greek, here is the original Did you know that Andromeda, the
Bilingual Children’s Books delight Ethiopian and Greek kids in Greece Read More »
Debtsa is a small agricultural community in the high mountains of southwest Ethiopia. It’s a hard 2-day drive from Addis Ababa, mostly on dirt roads. It is beautiful, it is remote. It’s challenging to get there, it’s challenging to stay there, and it’s especially challenging to leave. A piece of my heart is planted there
A New Library, A New Language for OHBD-RSG Books, More Big Dreams! Read More »
Process and Creative are often oxymorons. But with this project we needed to make them play nice together. We need to be creative without losing sight of our goals to create many culturally appropriate bilingual books for children in Ethiopia and beyond. And we needed process that would overwhelm or undermine being creative especially since
Creating children’s books is not an easy endeavor. My first children’s books took 10 years from writing the story, thinking I would illustrate it but not finding the time, then finding a busy illustrator and working through all the different versions to finally teaching myself to self-publish and releasing it into the world. Jane has
Hi! My title is Little Lion. My sentences are short because I like to teach kindergarten children who are just learning to put sounds to words. One of my best features is the colorful pictures on my pages. The children love looking at my pictures! They invite them into the story about life in Ethiopia.
OHBD RSG Book Distribution and Library Training in Gondar By Caroline Walker, Executive Director of Together We Learn (an OHBD collaborating organization) Access to reading materials is very important to the lives of the young people we work with. Across the country, many children do not have books at home. Those that do have access
OHBD RSG Book Distribution and Library Training in Gondar Read More »
How do we do it—pull meaning from symbols on paper, or from bits of light and dark in flickering electric impulses? This miracle is called reading. I learned to read in Maji, in deep southern Ethiopia. My mother taught me in my own childhood language of English. As I filled workbooks at our dining room
