Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Literacy Benefit in Vancouver (Nov 22)

I am delighted to tell you about the Institute for Cross-cultural Exchange’s (ICE) first literacy benefit in Vancouver. Aubrey Davis, award-winning children’s author, will be appearing on the evening of November 22, at the YWCA, to tell stories that have been told for centuries in Afghanistan. Mr. Davis’ benefit tour, called “A Melon Grows in Kandahar,” will help fund ICE’s current campaign to donate high-quality books featuring the Afghan tales to literacy programs across Canada.

The programs that this event is benefiting will provide books, based on these stories and others like them, to disadvantaged children across Canada. A million Canadian children — nearly one in six — live in poverty, and many of them struggle with illiteracy. In the one year since its inception, ICE has provided over 5000 books to children at-risk, working through partner programs such as the YWCA, United Way’s “Success by Six,” Frontier College, and Calgary Reads.

This evening of storytelling is an opportunity to experience what we share with Afghan culture and can learn from it. These witty, provocative, often zany teaching-stories from Afghanistan offer a glimpse of a magnificent culture and its great contribution to the human story.

I hope you’ll join us at ICE’s first Vancouver benefit for children’s literacy.

For more information please contact me directly or visit ICE's website at http://www.iceeducation.org/engl/projects.html#events for a copy of our
flyer and press release.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Boden
Vice-President and Director
Institute for Culture Exchange
Tel. 604-421-3743