The Sharjah-based Kalimat Foundation for Children’s Empowerment (KF), has supplied 1,000 books to ten Armenian public libraries, which include a variety of genres and aim to offer easy reads to Arab refugee children and young adults.

This recent effort forms part of KF’s ‘Pledge a Library’ initiative, which was launched by to support and empower refugee Arab children and young adults through reading by offering them high-quality reading materials in Arabic language. The initiative also aims to help these young readers better understand and appreciate their first language, heritage and cultural legacy living outside their countries of origin.

Amna Al Mazimi, Manager of KF, said: “Bringing 1,000 Arabic books to libraries in Armenia build on our efforts to reach out to the maximum number of Arab refugee children worldwide. Through these initiatives, we reinforce our commitment to help children caught up in crisis overcome their hardships by losing themselves in the stories contained within these books. It is our firm belief that books play a critical role in shaping opinions and personalities.”

“The key objective of the initiative is to help these children open a new window into the world, one that will allow them to explore new cultures and human experiences, gain new knowledge and expertise, and become agents of positive change in their countries,” she added.

Since its inception in 2016, Kalimat Foundation contributed to launching and implementing a series of initiatives aimed at providing books to public libraries and children in refugee camps. This aligns with its vision that seeks to give children in disadvantaged areas access to sources of knowledge, and with its dedication to building future knowledge-based Arab generations who are open-minded to and well-educated on global cultures.