Ten Million Hero Book Project (10MhbP)

A "hero book" is a document developed through a process by which a child is invited to be the author, illustrator, main character, and editor of a book that is designed to give him or her power over a specific challenge in life. The hero book process involves leading groups of children through a series of drawing exercises and autobiographical story telling.

Throughout this process, there is a focus on challenges and problems which are in some way political as well as personal in the sense that these problems affect other children as well and have their roots in what may be described as public health issues. At the end of the process, participants have a hand-bound storybook of their own making that organisers believe both reinforces their hero-survival-resilient qualities and draws attention to public health issues.

"Partners within the 10MMP believe that there is an urgent need for strategies that are not piecemeal and uncoordinated, and that the scale of the challenge is met with innovative and effective psycho social programming. The 10MHBP is a strategy that combines several of these objectives all grounded within a participatory action research plan."

Organisers say the most important aspect of the project is the training of youth hero facilitators. A youth hero facilitator is a child who has made his or her own hero book, has become proficient in the process, and is able to lead other children through this process or train other youth hero facilitators.

Organisers anticipate that the compilation of hero stories will serve as a focal point for the collaborative work; however, the train-the-trainer processes and the mini libraries of hero books that constitute initial phases of the project plan are considered to be of primary importance. The mini libraries are a small collection of hero books that are developed locally to the point that they are readable by, and may be inspirational to, other children. A group of children who are part of a children's club or who are in the same school might work not only at making a first edition of their own hero book as a private therapeutic document but may also work to develop a second edition that is designed to be part of the local mini library and possibly other libraries. Some of the particularly illustrative hero books will be published a third time to be incorporated into a traveling library of individual books - and a fourth time within the anthology.

Children, Health.

The project plans to share the hero booking methodology with various organisations and programmes, prompting each organisation to develop a mini library out of which a selection of particularly illustrative and compelling hero stories can be chosen to appear in the anthology.