Imagine this:
A group of school children, barefoot, walking back home from school in the evening. One holds a colorful book with drawings of frogs leaping through the wetlands of Lake Victoria. Another is holding unfinished sketches of birds whose names she has been reading aloud in order to remember them—because she’s never seen them but now dreams of protecting them. They are from another reading session, one that made them begin to see beyond their world.
At the start of this year, I asked myself a question: "What can 30 storybooks do?"
- 30 books in 30 classrooms means hundreds of children introduced to the magic and urgency of protecting biodiversity.
- Children in rural schools often grow up next to endangered wetlands, forests, and species but rarely learn about them in class.
- In Uganda, children in rural areas have little access to locally relevant environmental education. These books become first windows into their own ecosystems.
Help me change this! I want more children to read about reptiles, cichlids, forest monkeys, and birds.
I believe every child that get to read Chali’s Adventures On Lake Victoria, will begin a journey that connects their heart to the lake, to nature, and to the future of biodiversity.