Finally, as the eve of my twenty-sixth year dawns upon me (January 21st), I have one major birthday wish that I hope those of you reading this will able to help fulfill. Best thing is, it's something that will transcend geography and a gift I truly hope you will find it within your heart
to give on my behalf.

Last summer, I was contacted by a good friend (whom I first met through TIG, neato, eh?) who heads up an organisation named "Five Minutes to Midnight (FMM)". This group began as an online webzine by youth concerned about human rights and current affairs and has now branched into many other projects and efforts that are run by youth internationally. Their mission statement is "To give youth a voice and media outlet that will allow them to become aware and get involved in political and international issues."

To celebrate their first-year anniversary, FMM started a project to publish their many articles into a book form. With support from the Toronto (Canada) Branch of the United Nations Association (UNA), they began to compile many of their key articles to cover various international issues and topics that had been written throughout the
year by young people around the world. As it turns out, my friend (Wojciech Gryc, if you want to look up his TIG profile) kindly asked me to contribue an article (which I did) and the book went to press this past fall and is now available for purchase worldwide. The best part of all this is that 100% of the proceeds from buying this book will be used to aid the organisation "War Child" (www.warchild.ca) and their human rights work. Currently, War Child is directing its efforts towards the children who have survived the tsunami crisis in Sri Lanka through:

1)Food, safe water, shelter, sanitation and health care;
2)Expert psychosocial support and related interventions to help emotionally traumatized children cope with the tragic effects of the tsunami disaster and its aftermath;
3)Financial support to provide building materials and other related items to enable families to rebuild their homes and regain hope.

Here is a breakdown of how they are using the funds (in CDN $):

$20 will provide food for one week for a family of six.
$50 will provide plastic sheeting and blankets to give shelter to a homeless family.
$100 will provide psychosocial counselling to children traumatized by the tsunami.
$500 will provide construction materials to help a family begin to rebuild their destroyed home

I thank you if you have already somehow contributed towards this wonderful global effort to aid the people recovering from this immense tragedy. But if you haven't yet, I kindly encourage you to consider doing so by purchasing a copy of this book. Instead of receiving
something for myself this year for my birthday, it would bless me infinitely more to know that something I wrote will be able to help these hundreds of thousands of children who really need to be loved and aided during this time.

So please consider visiting FMM's website at "www.i2r.org/fmm" and help me help these children by buying a copy of this book. It is set up so you can order the book from there via PayPal and your credit card and the cost (includes shipping and handling) will be as follows depending on which country you currently reside. I've done the currency conversion myself via "www.xe.com" international currency converter (so those who currently reside outside these areas can check for themselves):

Canada: $12.50
USA: $10.17
UK: £7.61
Europe:10.94 Euro (sorry, can't figure out how to make the symbol work!)

The article that I wrote for this book is entitled "The Naming of a Nomad" that describes some of my experiences of immigrating with my parents to Canada as refugees and growing up in a foreign land. I'm really grateful and honoured for the opportunity of having it appear in this book. I'm really excited that my writing is being published around the world and that my dreams of becoming a meaningful writer have been coming true (now I just need a publishing agent to sign me a book contract, eh?)!

Do message me or post a comment to let me know if you've
decided to help me celebrate my 26th by buying an FMM book to help War Child and other efforts of other young people around the globe out there making a big difference in it!