Hey folks,

Happy February, and please excuse the long delay ... first the holidays and then helping with Haiti relief efforts have kept us busy.

However, we're jazzed to be moving forward with the Little Brother translations. We had an exciting planning session with a Burmese colleague from the All Burma IT Student Union on Friday, and they're getting started on translations for the book. We're planning to serialize the translation, releasing a chapter at a time on blogs so that people can read it as it comes out. We'll keep you updated on that and other distribution plans as we move along.

In the meantime, we have released two versions of the book cover in Burmese, thanks to fab designer Jonathan Berger. Check 'em out!

Oh, and the campaign was picked up by Mother Jones! Great work, you all! Your support made this possible.

Cheers,
Emily

Wow, excellent work, everyone! It was so great to go to bed last night knowing that we'd already reached our goal.

Thank you so much to you all for your contributions and promoting the campaign. We're so thrilled to be able to support our Burmese partners and to get Little Brother translated into Burmese.

We'll keep you updated as the project progresses. Please send me your twitter handles, websites or blogs so that we can properly thank you in an upcoming blog post.

Elated!
Emily

Emily Jacobi
Digital Democracy
ejacobi(at)digital-democracy(dot)org

Supporters of Little Brother,

Thanks to your generous pledges, we've now reached 75% of our goal! We have 28 hours left to raise the remaining $560.

I recorded this short video to encourage people to donate ... can you spread the word? Here's a link to our blog post: http://www.digital-democracy.org/2009/12/14/two-days-left-to-support-burmese-activists/

Huge thank yous for all of your support.

Emily

Wow, folks, you all rock!

Thank you to all the new backers from the past few days! Thanks to your generous pledges and spreading the word, we've reached 61% of our goal!

I want to tell you more about our friends who will be doing the translations. They're all young Burmese activists forced to live in exile outside of the country either because they were involved in political work and served time in political prison (learn more about that in this video: http://www.digital-democracy.org/2009/12/08/ddtv-episode-8-burmas-political-prisoners/ ) or because they are persecuted ethnic minorities who fled attacks by the Burmese army.

The $550 per language will cover their living expenses for a few month, and they'll be working in teams to translate the book ... we're excited to see how they translate it into Burmese slang.

As of now we have a little over 2 days left to reach our goal ... any messages you can send out via blogs, Facebook or Twitter are clutch in this final countdown!

Special thanks to Little Brother author Cory Doctorow and editor Patrick Neal Heyman - without your amazing work on the book, this project wouldn't exist!

Read Patrick's great blog post: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011973.html

Little Brother backers,

Thanks to support and pledges from the 22 of you, we have reached $835, 38% of our goal! We have 5 days and 7 hours to raise the remaining amount.

If you haven't already, please pass this along to your friend/colleagues/social networks. Today is International Human Rights day, so it's the perfect day to encourage friends to donate!

With deep gratitude,
Emily

Little Brother backers,

Thank you again so much for your support. It's been awesome to see the emails come in.

I'm writing to ask you to step it up and help us get more backers signed on. The fact that you pledged is a great talking point in convincing others to donate, too. Can you ask people to support us via email, your blogs, Facebook and/or Twitter?

Many thanks,
Emily

Good morning, Little Brother backers!

Let me begin with a huge thank you for being the first 10 backers of this project. We are thrilled to be getting such early traction. Thanks to your ten contributions, we're already 21% funded!

I couldn't be more excited. As more and more Burmese youth spend time in Internet cafes, chatting with their friends overseas, yet unable to read much English (the educational system is abysmal), Little Brother translated into their native languages offers a great antidote to despair. Hope, inspiration, and a good read.

We've been keeping our Burmese colleagues who will do the translations up to date, and they're thrilled. Life on the borders is challenging, and they struggle to survive. The pay they receive for translating will last them many months, and help support refugees in Bangladesh, computer trainings in Thailand, and more.

Help us spread the word! Maybe you have friends who'd like to throw in for Thanksgiving, or know a great blog to post this on.

Feel free to contact me directly, particularly if I haven't thanked you on Twitter yet!

Djezutimbade! (Burmese for thank you)
Emily

ejacobi (at) digital-democracy.org