Afghanistan is full of dreamers, artists, musicians, innovators, activists, citizens, mothers, students, and leaders who all share a common dream: brighter futures for Afghanistan.
To help share their stories, Sharp Stuff has partnered with Mountain2Mountain, a nonprofit organization working in Afghanistan, to provide a place for these voices and stories to live. Sharp Stuff works to innovate in the worlds of storytelling and publishing and are excited to release Afghan Dreamers as a followup to their 2012 book American Dreamers. Mountain2Mountain is creating opportunities for women and girls in conflict regions through education and the empowerment of voice. Together they are launching Afghan Dreamers, a project for optimism in the face of war and a chance to tell new stories. This is a new connection between activism, development, and storytelling production. It is peacemaking and bookmaking in a new way.
Shannon Galpin, the founder of Mountain2Mountain (and the first woman to mountain bike in Afghanistan), will travel to Afghanistan to meet and interview these dreamers and collect their stories. Upon return, she will share the content with Sharp Stuff to design, edit, and produce Afghan Dreamers. The sale of the book will help fund the projects presented in its pages, as a percentage of sales will be donated to Mountain2Mountain to create a Dreamer Fund.
To help start this project, Sharp Stuff and Mountain2Mountain have launched a campaign on Rally, a new crowdfunding platform for charity and activist fundraising, with the goal of raising $20,000 for the project. Donations will fund the trip, visits, and interviews with 20+ innovators, as well as the translation and transcription of the stories. This will all be done by Shannon and her amazing team. Anyone interested in supporting the work of Afghan dreamers and facilitating positive development in the region is encouraged to donate.
The point of the project is to put more eyes on positive stories rather than the negative, which will hopefully creative a ripple effect of inspiration. We want to bring the public into the stories of Afghanistan. And everyone can feel like they played a small role in helping this book get published by supporting the cause.
– Jake Dockter, Director of Content at Sharp Stuff
