Finishing the Red List

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Donated: $7290

Still needed: $2710

Time left: 4 hours…….

 

What’s the Endangered Alphabets up to? We’re going back to the big-picture thinking that no other organization in the world is doing: we’re in the middle of our Red List campaign to track down every script currently in use in the world and assess just how healthy, or how threatened, each one is. And we need your help.

It’s a huge task, three years in the making, and we’re currently halfway through.  We’ve already discovered the world has probably twice as many scripts as most people think. We’ve also discovered:

· A new Indian script that was adopted by its community by winning a contest;

· An African script based on colors;

· A divinatory script that incorporates the pawprints of jackals;

· Several West African scripts that involve symbols embroidered, printed or painted on fabrics;

· Three scripts whose creators are, or have been, in jail for acts of civil disobedience (such as making scripts for their community);

· At least four minority scripts that are being revived through calligraphy classes in schools or in markets;

· And, perhaps most remarkable of all, a sacred Indian script that is recited aloud while being written in chalk letters on a slate, then the slate is washed with turmeric water and the devotees drink it, thereby incorporating the divine letters and the spirits they represent.

But to finish the Red List we need to raise $10,000 by March 1. We may be halfway through the project, but the toughest research is finding where the smallest, most out-of-the-way, most marginalized cultures are, where the greatest need and urgency are, and where help is most needed.

Please support this work HERE  or, if you’re wary of online money transactions, you can send a cheque to the Endangered Alphabets at PO Box 4363, Burlington, Vermont 05406, USA.

Thanks so much.

Tim

P.S. Everyone who donates $25 or more will receive an audiobook edition of my forthcoming book Writing Beyond Writing, currently in editing and due out later this year.