I’ve got a frustratingly long to do list at the moment, so am delighted that I’m able to report that I’ve completed one of the projects on it.

I’ve just sent Bringing Books to Life, two short guides written for teachers working in schools in sub-Saharan Africa, off to the printer.

The first guide ‘Starting and managing a book collection’ looks at how schools can establish and manage a collection of books, including options for the storage of books, systems for lending books, and how books should be treated to help them last.

The second guide ‘Using books in the classroom’, sets out the importance of introducing students to written materials and shares some ideas for how these materials, including books, can be used in the classroom to teach reading and improve learning. It introduces five different approaches for using written material with students: reading aloud, shared, guided, group and independent reading.

Exposure to written and printed texts is essential for developing the ability to read. However, one of the challenges that most schools in Africa face is a lack of books and learning materials, and even when schools have reading materials, teachers often don’t have the skills and experience to use them effectively.

Bringing Books to Life is designed to encourage teachers and school communities to consider how to produce and acquire books and learning materials and to use those that they have more effecitively.

The guides were illustrated by Chitra Merchant and designed my Mark Studio, both of whom have done a fantastic job.

The guides will be distributed as a set to teachers in schools in sub-Saharan Africa by Book Aid International.

I have to confess that I’ve always harboured ambitions to own a little piece of land in the country. Well thanks to Greenpeace I now do, albeit along with almost 37,000 others!

The creative people at Greenpeace have purchased a plot of land smack bang in the middle of the area where the government intends to build a new runway at Heathrow.

You see the government plans to go ahead with airport expansion across the country even though this means we'll have no hope of meeting our climate emission targets. At full capacity, Heathrow would become the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the whole country.

I need to say right here and now that I do my fair share of flying, largely long distance for work. But I also accept that I, like everyone else have to fly less. However in order to do so we need the government to get serious about limiting the expansion of aviation and to provide us with real alternatives, especially for shorter distance travel.

Greenpeace bought the plot at Heathrow to make sure that the contribution of aviation to climate isn’t totally ignored.

Using the plot as a focus for organising they intend to challenge the Government’s decision to build a third runway every step of the way - by a building a strong community of supporters including the thousands of beneficial owners of the plot, creating a legal block against any planning applications or attempts to buy the land, and if necessary physically blocking construction - standing with the people of Sipson, whose 700 homes would be flattened to build the runway, to stop the bulldozers.

You can sign up to be a beneficial owner and help stop airport expansion in general and the building of a third runway at Heathrow in particular here.

World leaders have promised that all children will have a primary education by 2015 but with only 6 years left to go, there are still 75 million children missing out on an education completely. One in nine of the world’s children currently do not have the chance to go to school. Girls, disabled children and those living in countries affected by war are most at risk of missing out on education. At the current rate of progress 58 countries have almost no chance of achieving the goal by 2015.

Send my friend to school is the UK part of a worldwide movement, the Global Campaign for Education, which is mobilising kids in the UK to campaign for more and better aid to global education.

Girls are being terrorized in Afghanistan for going to school: Ms. Husseini is a student at the Mirwais School for Girls outside Kandahar. Two months ago, as she was walking to school with her sister, a man on a motorcycle sprayed her with acid, burning her face and eyelids. Fourteen other students and teachers were attacked that day in an attempt to shut down the school. The attempt failed - today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well - about 1,300 in all.

Building new schools and ensuring that children - and especially girls - attend has been one of the main objectives of the government and the nations that have contributed to Afghanistan's reconstruction.

There's a great New York Times article and photo slide show with these and other photos by Danfung Dennis which you can view by clicking here.

I hope you had a restive end of year break, I did, having spent ten days on a meditation retreat in  Oxfordshire. I hope that 2009 brings you and yours peace and happiness.

I was sad to see today that Helen Suzman has died. As a young, aspiring political activist I read Suzman’s memoir ‘In No Uncertain Terms’ and was inspired by her use of every means at her disposal, including centrally her position as a member of South Africa’s Parliament, to “expose the tragic effect of apartheid”. She used to quote Theodore Roosevelt: “I did what I could, where I was, with what I had,” and what a good job she did too.

Helen Suzman: Guardian Obituary