GFC Donates Books to Homeless Children across America

Washington, DC - I’m not ashamed to admit it—at my first sleepover as a little kid, I got scared and my mom had to pick me up in the middle of the night. In a strange new house, without my bedtime routine, I just couldn’t seem to fall asleep. After that scary night, I learned that I could bring my blanket when I slept at my friend’s house, and that it was all right if I asked his parents for a bedtime story. These familiar comforts helped me get over the new and scary shadows in my best friend’s bedroom, and the weird silence in his neighborhood. Thankfully, I had a stable home growing up, so scary nights in a new house were unusual. But for the 1 in 50 American children who are homeless, a scary night in a strange new place is their bedtime routine.

There are more homeless children in America today than at any other time since the Great Depression. Homeless families generally do not live on the streets, as their children will then be removed by child protective services, but instead move from shelters to cars to cheap hotels to crashing with family and neighbors. Sometimes families even split up in order to fit into shelters. This constant movement and instability inflicts lasting trauma on young children. Homeless children are twice as likely to repeat a grade, and their average high school graduation rate is below 25 percent. Read more

Washington, DC - Soccer is a national obsession in Brazil. Unfortunately, not every kid is able to participate. As Brazil’s internationally unparalleled team plays at the World Cup, now is a good opportunity to look deeper into what soccer actually means for kids in this country.

Children can be found all over Brazil playing soccer, barefoot, on homemade fields. But low-income youth often do not get coaches or organized teams. Their public schools do not offer varsity teams or even PE classes, and they cannot afford access to playing fields at expensive universities and private clubs.

Many of these low-income youth live on less than a dollar a day, in shantytowns on the edges of cities and start working before they even complete elementary school. These young people are left out of more than just soccer—they are denied access to much of the economy and to full participation in society. Read more

Washington, DC - Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter, has caught the imagination of many readers. Children and adults alike are inspired by the story of a young girl and her community who braved forbidding social forces that decreed that girls could not go to school.

This is a powerful story written with sensitivity for a young audience. Jeanette’s simple compositions in acrylic startle readers with their rich, expressive quality. The book begins with dark clouds over jagged mountains that pierce the sky. Look more closely and we find hints of life and clues to a rich heritage in this city in Afghanistan (“artists and writers and scholars and mystics who, long ago, made Herat beautiful”). Read more

Washington, DC - Last month, we celebrated our most recent book, Our Grandparents: A Global Album, by hosting an online contest challenging Facebook fans to tell their stories about their grandparents. We received entries from people all over the world!

Contestants told us about grandfathers who stayed in Europe to help smuggle Jews into Israel during WWII; who had a “fleet of VW buses, only one of which was usually road-worthy”; and who invited them into their homes when their parents were unable to care for them. They spoke of struggling to move beyond language barriers with a Pakistani grandmother and recounted memories of a Ugandan grandma who visited her grandson in the hospital each night for months. And they reminisced about Mama Liz’s collard greens and BBQ ribs and Harriet’s blueberry pie, and even about grandmothers who “swore like a truck driver.” Read more

Washington, DC - A look at the new Focus Features film, disarmingly titled…Babies

Last week, I struggled to find a row of seats in a crowded movie theater in Washington, DC. A free film screening hosted by Global Action for Children was the hook, and I always enjoy a good free movie. To my left sat a few co-workers; to my right, my husband, mildly twitching. Surrounding us were dozens of people, men and women, young and old, who were all eagerly awaiting the dimmed lights to watch…Babies.

Hence, the twitching. Read more