As professionals who care passionately about the natural world, environmental educators are living through some challenging times. Now there is good news about something real that you can do to help bring about positive change in a troubled part of the world while fostering a deep connection between children and nature.

With your support this new book can bear fruit: The Garden of Wisdom: Middle Eastern Stories for Environmental Stewardship. Please visit the Garden of Wisdom campaign at the following web page to find out how you can help to make it possible to publish these inspiring stories:

https://shinefund.org/funds/96

Your contribution will help us to build peace in the Middle East—one person, one organization and one story at a time. In recognition of its promise to transform the lives of many, this project has been awarded the National Storytelling Network’s prestigious Brimstone Award for Applied Storytelling. Once the book is published, proceeds will be used to offer grants that support the work of environmental education and conservation organizations from throughout the region.

For the past ten years Michael J. Caduto—co-author of the award-winning Keepers of the Earth® series of books and author of Catch the Wind Harness the Sun—has been directing an environmental storytelling project in the Middle East. The Stories for Environmental Stewardship Program involves more than 50 individuals and 20 organizations from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. This courageous community of professionals shares a passion for preserving nature with children as a steppingstone for peaceful coexistence.

The Stories for Environmental Stewardship Program is now ready to publish its first book: The Garden of Wisdom: Middle Eastern Stories for Environmental Stewardship. Artists and photographers from the Middle East are illustrating this anthology of children’s stories. This book will also become a steppingstone to an environmental education curriculum that reveals how nature is the root of a shared connection to the land that binds all peoples as one.