TrashHero Children's Book

Hello everyone!
We are fresh back from a trip to Southeast Asia, where we held a series of "family meetings" with the leaders of our local Trash Hero community chapters in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
During these meetings we presented the kids program and distributed 3000 books and shirts that will soon be put to use! The materials were enthusiastically welcomed by our volunteers - above is a photo from Trash Hero Candidasa in Bali, where they have already started the program.
Thank you so much again - it was only through your generous donations that this project was possible. We will report on the progress over the next coming months.

We're excited to let you know that the Kids Project is already moving ahead!
The Kluaynamthai Foundation in Thailand has sponsored the printing of the first Thai edition, and Indonesian and English versions will follow in the next 2 months.

We are also putting in place the training and infrastructure needed for the distribution and delivery of the program.

For those of you who requested Goodies, we will start to send those out very soon :)
If you are entitled to physical products such as a hard copy of the book, you may need to wait a while longer until they are finished and shipped to Switzerland.

Thank you for your understanding - and most of all thank you to everyone for your support!

With your generous support, we have made it to the first stage of our project! Reaching the 8000 euro target means we can now CONFIRM that the Trash Hero Kids book will be printed, distributed and taught to kids in Thailand and Indonesia.

But we still have a few more days to go even further! Since starting the project, we have had interest from our teams in Myanmar and Malaysia to create local language versions of the project, as well as requests for more books in Thailand.

So please, please, let's keep this momentum and continue to raise funds so your contribution has even more impact. Thank you!

We are almost two thirds on the way to our target! Thank you to all who have donated so far.

Many people have commented on the beautiful illustrations in the final book and indeed, we chose our artist precisely for her evocative, sensitive treatment of the story, rather than the cartoon style so often seen in children’s environmental stories.

Here, we want to share with you Ewelina’s own story of how she came to the project.

DREAMS COME TRUE

"This project is very important to me, it’s very close to my heart, so I want to tell you the story how it all started for me. Maybe later you will become a part of the project too :).

I’m in love with nature, underwater life or forests are sacred for me. But these places are in danger.

Once I was swimming on the coral reefs and I saw an amazing, impressive giant blue starfish. I swam just a bit further and something blue took my attention again. I expected to see another beautiful animal, but what I found was just a blue plastic bag. Oh my, it was such a sad view. At moment like this you just want to cry. You are aware you are in such amazing world, but this world will disappear if we do not care enough.

After this experience I had a very specific dream - I dreamed about picking up trash in Bali!
In the beginning I felt little ashamed to tell it to anyone, my mom could have said "Hey kid, you should do bigger things than collecting trash!". So I kept it secret for a while ;)

One year later I decided to move to Bali and it was the best time to realise the dream!
But of course I would feel awkward to do this alone. So I was ready to write an advertisement to find other crazy people to join me in this adventure. Then I found out about Trash Hero! First we were only three people, but after few months the group grew bigger, even kids from local schools were involved.

When I returned to Poland, a dear Balinese friend told me that Trash Hero World had the idea how to explain other kids why it’s important to take care of our world, and they looked for an illustrator. I applied for the contest. I wanted to take part in a project that is so close to my heart. I love this world and I want to make it better.

Together with Trash Hero we have prepared a wonderful, very inspiring book that stimulates the sensitivity of children to the surrounding world. I believe this book is giving important lessons of loving our planet and has to reach all children all over the globe, starting in Asia.”

Ewelina Wajgert is a Polish graphic artist, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Follow Ewelina here: www.facebook.com
And of course, please share this message and show your friends what you are helping to achieve. Maybe they would also like to make this project a reality with their own contribution?

Thank you! #togetherwemakeadifference

We’re on our way! More than half the target amount reached in two weeks, thanks to your belief and support ♥

Some people have asked about the origin of our T-shirts and last week, Roman Peter went to visit the place they are produced, a small family business in Bali. We believe change comes from within communities, and so we always support local enterprise wherever possible.

Watch the clip here: www.youtube.com

We are so grateful to every person who has contributed so far. If you have a friend or colleague who you think might also be willing to sponsor this project, please let them know about it too! A personal recommendation is the best way to make this happen. Thank you and have a great week!

Wow, what an amazing first week! Thanks to each of you who have helped us reach an amazing ONE THIRD of our target goal in only 7 days.
We’d like to share a bit more about the project with you: here is a preview of the English version of the book. Of course, it will also be printed in Thai and Indonesian versions for local children.

Take a look here: www.facebook.com

The idea, as you can see, is to engage the children with the story, then ask for their help (= positive actions to reduce and prevent plastic waste).
Most kids in the 5 - 10 year age range have a natural tendency to be helpful, especially if there is a reward involved, and all their friends are doing it too.
We believe that, with our existing network of local chapters standing by to supervise and motivate the children in this program, we can inspire every child who joins to become a new Trash Hero.

If you know any teachers in Thailand or Indonesia who might wish to take part in the program with their class, do let us know!

We still have a long way to go to reach our funding goal, so please feel free to share any of these images from the #trashherokidsbook (they would make great Instagram posts!) together with the project page link www.crowdify.net (or short link: goo.gl to your social networks.
This would really help us a lot.

Thank you! #togetherwemakeadifference