Backpack Full of Fear Kickstarter Launches to Publish Young Refugee Stories
The Survival Stories of 20 Young Syrian Refugees Will See Wide Distribution with the Help of Backers
PRESS RELEASE
December 2, 2024
Let’s Make a Book
Contact: John Ehab
Phone: (303) 818-2096
Email: john@letsmakeabook.org
DENVER, CO., December 2, 2024—War in Syria has broken up millions of families. Daily airstrikes and shootings have separated countless children from their parents and homes. The survivors of conflict in the Middle East so often become merely another figure or statistic, and their stories are left unheard. Let’s Make a Book wants to change that. The organization has officially launched the Kickstarter campaign for Backpack Full of Fear—an illustrated book containing the survival stories of 20 young Syrian refugees.
This campaign aims to crowdsource the printing of 5,000 books and their charitable distribution to libraries, schools, and readers throughout America, Europe, and the Middle East. Funds will also go to completing an e-book and audiobook. The Kickstarter allows backers to personally fund the donation of set amounts of books.
Some of the book’s subjects crossed the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded, sinking boats. Others, pursued by police, made their way on foot through dense, dark forests. Throughout their perilous journeys, smugglers and kidnappers exploited their situations to turn a profit, and armed militias threatened to take their lives.
“Interviewing our young subjects took us to 24 cities in 11 countries. Planning involved countless phone calls and emails with NGOs, schools, volunteers, and parents,” said John Ehab, the author of Backpack Full of Fear and executive director of Let’s Make a Book. “I met one-on-one with around 100 refugees of different ages to arrive at the collection in Backpack Full of Fear. My goal was to capture close memories that were still fresh in the minds of the young adults I interviewed.”
But with this goal came an added degree of difficulty. “The initial challenge was that, although fresh memories are unique, the subjects were more vulnerable than adults remembering their childhood, as with other books and memoirs. At first I wanted to write longer stories, but I soon realized that I would have to work with shorter material. This constraint also compelled me to interview more children than I had originally intended.”
After transcribing hours upon hours of interviews, the manuscript of Backpack Full of Fear was completed with a small team of editors and proofreaders in 2024.
· The Kickstarter campaign will go through January 27, 2025.
· Let’s Make a Book hopes to begin distributing books by the end of March, 2025.
· With the help of backers, the author will be touring schools and libraries beginning in the Spring of 2025, speaking with the public about the book and the process behind its creation.
· Backers can choose from a wide range of reward options—they can give a book and get a book, simply donate books, and receive a book and other rewards for themselves.
As the Kickstarter campaign continues, Let’s Make a Book will be posting content about Backpack Full of Fear, including updates from the refugees featured in the book. To learn more and back the campaign, readers are encouraged to visit the project’s Kickstarter page.
Let’s Make a Book is a nonprofit concerned with children’s creativity. In 2016 and 2017, Let’s Make a Book offered dozens of workshops to refugees in Europe and the Middle East. Let’s Make a Book has also raised thousands of dollars for an education center in the Middle East.