Starting the year by recognizing those who are important to us, Open Hearts Big Dreams has been a big supporter of Ethiopia Reads since 2011, when Ellenore Angelidis, her family and friends in the Seattle area started organizing fundraisers in support of Ethiopia Reads’ work, which grew to an important element of our support. In 2016, Open Hearts Big Dreams became an independent nonprofit that supports innovative, high-impact projects supporting literacy, K-12 education and leadership opportunities for children, their parents and families in Ethiopia.
They are supporting a range of projects, but they are a key collaborator for Ethiopia Reads’ work to make more quality Ethiopian language books available in our libraries, in other schools and libraries and eventually in the marketplace. Jane Kurtz (our own Co-Founder, longtime Board President and Advisor) is serving as project lead for the Open Hearts Big Dreams Ready Set Go Books project. In 2018, the Creative Team she guides and the Production Team led by Stephanie Stephens and Kate Bare created 40 new attractive, illustrated easy reader books which can be printed in any Ethiopian language and provide crucial steps toward literacy. These books are available on Kindle and print on demand (via Amazon) in the US and European market.
More than 100,000 copies of up to 22 Ready Set Go titles have been printed and distributed in Ethiopia, bilingually in English/Amharic, Afaan Oromo, Sidama and Dizin languages by Ethiopia Reads. We could not have undertaken this important project without all the creative and technical work to create the books and prepare them for local printing in Ethiopia, and Open Heart Big Dreams also provided 100% of the funding for our largest printing of 50,000 books in Amharic in October, and additional support for their distribution.
Without their support we could not have reached tens of thousands children, often with the first attractive storybooks they had seen in their own languages, so we want to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to the OHBD team! We hope to do lots more together in 2019!
