IBBY Appeal for Japan

A young Buddhist monk standing in the ruins of a railway station. (photo credit Chieko Suemori)

 

 

The destruction was brutal and the wave left little behind it apart form rubble and mud.

Quickly Chieko Suemori, former Executive Committee member of IBBY, sent out a request for picture books. She was overwhelmed! Nearly 110,000 books arrived within a few weeks. These were sorted and distributed to centres and temporary housing sites.

Volunteers at the book stations (photo credit M. Huggler)

But regular transport could not reach areas where roads and highways had been destroyed.  Regular bookmobiles were too large to travel down these choked ways and too expensive to buy and maintain. To take the books and volunteers to rural and remote areas that had been devastated small, robust vehicles are needed.  

The Ehon cars are just that

Volunteers are training people in Bibliotherapy, reaching more children and their families and carers, giving them the opportunity to escape, even for ten minutes, away from their shattered everyday lives.

Read more about the project at: http://www.ehonproject.org/iwate/

To read an article by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper go to:

Picture books bring smiles to young earthquake victims

To donate funds to the IBBY-Japan 2011 project go to: IBBY Children in Crisis Fund

Please mark your donations IBBY-Japan Appeal