Melville House launched its “Banana for Japan” campaign, donating the proceeds from Banana Yoshimoto‘s forthcoming novel, The Lake. Last week, the indie publisher had bestowed all the profits from sales made through its website ($5,000) to relief agencies tending to victims.

F+W Media commenced a 24-hour charity campaign today. The company has pledged 50% of profits earned from the sale of products and services to the American Red Cross. Interested parties should shop at one of the company’s 23 internet stores. O’Reilly mounted a sale and donated all revenues to earthquake relief.

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The Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler has opened an educational community called “City of Joy” in the Democratic Republic of Congo–tackling the ongoing problem of sexual violence and rape in the region.

According to The New York Times, the author raised $1 million for the project from V-Day, Unicef, and Google. The video embedded above shows Congolese women building City of Joy’s facilities. Located in the city of Bukavu, the new retreat will shelter 180 women (mostly past victims of rape) every year. Workers at City of Joy will teach about activism, human rights, self-defense, computer operation, and many other subjects. Ensler hopes these women will return to their home towns and serve as leaders.

Here’s an Ensler quote, from the article: “You build an army of women. And when you have enough women in power, they take over the government and they make different decisions. You’ll see. They’ll say ‘Uh-uh, we’re not taking this any longer,’ and they’ll put an end to this rape problem fast.”

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The press release reports: “School libraries in Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Somalia (Puntland, Somaliland), Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe will each receive 50-100 new and unused copies of each book donated, ensuring that whole classrooms of school children will be able to learn from them. Cambridge University Press has supported Book Aid International for a number of years, but this is the largest single donation to date.”

Since its inception, Book Aid International has supplied 30 million books to developing countries. Every year, approximately 500,000 books are collected and given to sub-Saharan Africa and Palestinian territories.

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