Success 5 days ahead of the deadline. Please read why we want to keep the momentum going …

First things first: We feel elated and excited that we have reached our goal. We can’t wait to kick into higher gear in order to realize the plans that are now possible with the help of more than 200 friends. Thank you very much. The backers lifted us up on their shoulders and carried us towards and across the finish line. Although increasingly optimistic over the last days, we were still surprised to see how the incoming support never stopped, and even accelerated, when the funding goal came into sight.

Here is the reason why we would like to invite you to continue pledging. We would give a certain percentage of the proceeds of our printed editions to two charitable institutions that are doing amazing work for Tibet and its people. Éric and Laurent visited those organizations while in Tibet:

• Highland Initiatives is a French non-profit which supports projects of social entrepreneurship in Tibet. Those projects are dealing with environmental protection, cultural heritage, fair trade, and supportive tourism.

• Braille Without Borders is a German non-profit which aims to remove the barriers to education which blind children in Tibet are encountering. For environmental and developmental reasons, the percentage of people visually impaired in Tibet is higher compared to many other places in the world. Braille Without Borders wants to give visually impaired Tibetan kids a launch pad for a better future.

Very much in the spirit of “Tibet, last scream!”, these organizations represent two wonderful reasons why we would be excited to see additional pledges. We hope that we can count on your continued support over the next days until the funding deadline.

Finally and most importantly: With your help, our project will become reality, and “Tibet, last scream!” will have a much wider reach through additional editions in more languages.

If the pledges continue to come in as they do right now, we may even be able to go further and add another edition in a language that we did not plan for initially. Also, feedback we received from you made us think about an e-book edition for one or more of the many reading devices out there. We are researching this option, but want to make sure that the quality of an electronic version matches that of the printed book exactly. We will keep you posted about the next phases of the project.

Again, we would like to express our sincere gratitude,

The "Happy" Team

P.S.: Nobody took us up on any of the “Meet-the-team” rewards … they are still available, as described in Update #7.