For more questions specific to respective volunteers see also : Authors FAQ, Illustrators FAQ, Translators FAQ and the Publisher Liaison FAQ
What other ways can I help?
First of all, would you pray for the success of this project? Regardless of your skill set, we’d love to see the profile of this project raised to recruit yet more talent. Having individuals willing to spread the word and recruit others in and of itself would be very helpful! Posting to this website on Facebook, emailing others and encouraging them to visit here and consider volunteering.
Why create new books? Can’t we just copy books from a book store or the library?
Unfortunately, while that would be a very easy thing to do allowing us to build our Library in a flash it would also be illegal to break international copyright laws.
Couldn’t we just buy copies of books that are helpful and then translate them?
Translating books without permission from the copyright owner (Author/Publisher) is also a violation of international copyright law. Copyright protected material simply cannot be used for our project without permission.
If permission is obtained from the copyright owner, can we use this material?
Yes absolutely! This includes books, webpages, blogs, pamphlets, brochures etc. Most copyright statements require written permission from the owner (author, publisher etc). There are countless books and other resources we’d love to use, but it takes time to request permission. We’d love to see a team of volunteers spending time seeking permission to use various resources for our project. A volunteer helping us in this way we call a publisher liaison, (click here for more information on how to help in this way.)
Why do we need artists to create artwork? Couldn’t we just copy artwork from resources like Google images?
While some images available are public domain, most images are not. Many images technically are very easy to extract from the internet but legally this would be very problematic. When dealing with images just like with with entire books we must remain safely in-line with international copyright laws which even protect web-based images.
Who is the target audience for this project?
While we have seen some interest from individuals on fields in other regions of the world, currently our efforts mostly target local Papua New Guinean believers many of whom live in very remote village settings. Still, any other audiences who find our content helpful are more than welcome to have access to our library. Because our audience of new readers consists of both adults and children we are targeting a reading complexity level of around 5th to 6th grade.
How does my artwork get into Microsoft Word?
If you don’t create artwork directly on a computer, use of a scanner, or in some cases a quality digital camera/phone/tablet will work fine too. As a volunteer artist, if this seems technically unfeasible, there are a couple volunteers who have indicated their willingness to help non-techie artists with this process. In this case, the artist would physically mail the artwork to the assistant or request and receive training from the assistant to learn the skills necessary. One way or another we’ll work together to make progress. Once the artwork is ready for insertion into Microsoft work, we generally recommend “Centered” and “In-line with text” format layout settings for each image as this makes it much easier for tribal people later down the road to work with the text around the images.
If I donate funds for this project, what would the funds be used for?
Donations would be helpful to print or subsidize printing to make things more affordable to the people we are serving.
What is the best way to donate funds to support this project?
Two options for supporting literacy in Papua New Guinea
- Give via credit card: call 1-866-547-2460 ext 1245 and request to donate funds to Papua New Guinea Literacy Account 218250
- Give by sending a check to our business address:
Ethnos360
312 W. First Street
Sanford FL, 32771 (in the Memo of the check specify “For Papua New Guinea Literacy 218250”
As a teacher, are there ways I can involve my class to help with this project?
Please consider involving your talented students! If any show talent for artwork or authoring books, have turned in assignments that can be adapted into content for remote local churches, please let us know! For example, currently we have no series of books that teach Geography. We could also really use a book series that introduces each country in the world etc.
I have another question, who do I ask?
Thank you for your interest, please don’t hesitate to ask by emailing the literacy team via cd-resources-admin@ntmpng.org, we will try and answer your question as soon as possible.