Back to literacy...

It's sort of coincidental that I found these three things in the last week, but they all tied together in my head and warranted a couple of dusty internet pages of the book-book.

First, I finished reading "Three Cups of Tea" last week. After reading the entire book, including acknowledgments and index, I felt that the book was really about as good as most people had said it was. It's not the most superbly written book ever, but the story is enough to warm the hearts of any book-lovers hoping to improve literacy stats worldwide. A man facing all manners of danger in order to educate young, poor, Pakistani children? In order to teach them to read? Quite inspiring, to say the least.

Then, a few days after I'd finished reading that, I saw this video. Such a similar topic (or, the exact same topic, different story) in such a short amount of time was enough to make it interesting. And indeed, these stories are quite interesting. Part of loving books is encouraging others to read as well. Sometimes that means teaching. Often, in fact.

And a few hours after finding that video, I found this slightly more local but effectively similar website. A nice idea for a charity, no doubt, but nothing out of the ordinary. It just ties in well with the entire theme: reading makes a difference in people's lives, but a lot of people can't read (whether because they have no books, no teachers, no standards, or no knowledge). I mentioned in the earlier post that I hoped to improve literacy stats in 2009. These three ideas might be a start.