It's YOUR choice: 10,000 Books into Landfills or the Hands of Indigenous Learners?

[Jzmackenzie]

Our nonprofit has the chance to get 10,000 or more bilingual books for free. It really is your choice: will 10,000 books go into landfills in the USA or the hands of indigenous learners in Mexico?

We have been told that about 10,000 bilingual books are being stored in the USA awaiting a nonprofit to put them to good use. Our nonprofit cannot afford the transportation cost into rural areas of Mexico for indigenous learners and the storage offer will not last forever.

We have been assured that by collecting many signatures we increase the likelihood that organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or the Ford Foundation would be more likely to consider helping us get books into the hands of indigenous rural Mexican children and adults.

Conservatives do not like supporting an immigrant Mexican family on welfare in the USA who cannot find a job. Liberals think that everyone deserves dignity if they can find work or not. Promoting access to knowledge in Mexico so that people living in Mexico have more personal power and therefore access to more employment inside Mexico keeps both viewpoints happy. Reducing emigration from Mexico into the USA creates stronger family bonds in Mexico by reducing the stress of employment away from family and extended family ties. Please sign our petition (http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/503) or try[b] (http://www.causes.com/causes/503970) to reduce emigration from Mexico to the USA and increase access to knowledge (literacy) in rural areas of Mexico.

Please sign the petition. It costs you nothing but it just might change indigenous kids lives forever.

Rural Mexican kids say "Gracias"

[rosamarta]

Jacquie, Perhaps this is another source of books for the indigenous Mexicans
THRIFTBOOKS.ORG
HELPING SUPPORT WORLD LITERACY
Thrift Books is dedicated to helping world literacy. We have donated hundreds of thousands of books to developing countries world-wide. These books go to schools and mostly to young children who would otherwise not have access to these life-changing tools. Reading can open the doors of the world. Learn how you can help.
http://www.thriftbooks.com/EmailPages/EmailSales.aspx

[mr bill]

Hi Jacquie,

I saw your defense of using the term indigenous elsewhere (May 28th a learned group of people from all over the world...) but it still bugged me and many others. Driving around Leon today with my mind wandering the thought came to me - was there a quasi-homophone at large?

English Indigenous Spanish Ind?gena

English Indigent Spanish Indigente

and now its easy to see how the term Indigente (not Ind?gena) applies to the Rural Poor especially in the state of Guanajuato which has the lowest percentage of ind?gena of any Mexican state:
===================
The Comisi?n Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Ind?genas (CDI) "... considera poblaci?n ind?gena (PI) a todas las personas que forman parte de un hogar ind?gena, donde el jefe(a) del hogar, su c?nyuge y/o alguno de los ascendientes (madre o padre, madrastra o padrastro, abuelo(a), bisabuelo(a), tatarabuelo(a), suegro(a)) declaro ser hablante de lengua ind?gena. Adem?s, tambi?n incluye a personas que declararon hablar alguna lengua ind?gena y que no forman parte de estos hogares.
==
En general se reconoce la existencia de las regiones ind?genas, ligado a la distribuci?n espacial de los pueblos ind?genas identificados por las lenguas y el reconocimiento generalizado de los diferentes pueblos con elementos distintivos, como son Los Altos de Chiapas, la Sierra Tarahumara, las Mixtecas, el Gran Nayar o las Huastecas, entre otras.

INEGI 2005 Population of the state of Guanajuato 4.8 million Indigenous population 10,347
http://www.inegi.org.mx/est/contenidos/e...est&c=9726
2/10ths of 1%

[Ulysses]

Hello Jackie!

At first, I was worried about those 10,000 books that might end up in American landfills instead of in the hands of Indigenous Learners, and then I started thinking, and the thinking led me to realize that I don't have enough information to know whether or not I should worry:

Are we talking about 10,000 copies of a single book, 10,000 different books, or something in between? The fewer the number of different books, the more important it is to know which books they are, what they are about, what do they say, who wrote them, and when? This is important because quite a few books are so bad that the best possible use for them is, in fact, landfill. Many people I know are convinced that approximately 90% of all books ever published fall into this category, and although I think they are being excessively critical, they do have a point: For instance, if the books are about how to invest in the stock market, or get dates with women, or travel in Europe for only $100 a day, use DOS 6.0, or write computer programs in Basic, it might be best to send them to the landfill.

The larger the number of different books, the more important it is to know if they are all going to one group of Indigenous Learners, or various groups - and if it is one group, what makes them so special? Why them, and not some other group? If it is various groups, how will it be determined which books to send to which groups? If it is taken to the extreme, and 10,000 different books are to be put in the hands of 10,000 different Indigenous Learners, how will the subject of the book be matched to what the Indigenous Learner who receives it is trying to learn?

Since these bilingual books are coming from the US, I assume they are bilingual in the sense of being in English & Spanish. But the Indigenous people of Mexico grow up speaking languages like Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, Guaran?, P'urh?pecha, Chichimeca, or Otom?, among many others. The primary challenge they face is to learn Spanish in order to better fend for themselves in the dominant Spanish-speaking society which surrounds them. Providing them with English/Spanish bilingual books will be about as helpful to them as Russian/Arabic bilingual books would be to us, if we were trying to learn either of those languages...

Hopefully, the bilingual books that are being offered contain information that will be relevant and helpful to Indigenous Mexicans, are in Spanish/Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, Guaran?, P'urh?pecha, Chichimeca, &/or Otom?, etc., and will be sorted and directed as appropriate. If this is the case, I will sign the petitions you recommend with great enthusiasm - Otherwise, I'm not sure I understand the point.