What is a Memory Book?

Memory Books are booklets containing 50 pages, a pen/glue stick, and elastic closure. Each page is designed to help a child tell their personal life story using words, drawings, poetry, and song.

Why are Memory Books important?

It is difficult for a child to recover from loss due to poverty, disease, and war. Their suffering oftentimes leaves them emotionally damaged and without clear direction or purpose for their lives.

Memory Books support and encourage these children by helping them preserve and tell their unique stories. When a child tells his story using words or drawings, it helps him identify hidden feelings and thoughts he may have about what happened and how it affected his life. Recording his memories helps him separate truth from fiction as time passes with age.

"I may have been able to save my father, instead I hid from the men carrying hatchets."
-Rwandan youth

When a child tells his story, he is able to better begin the journey of grieving his losses and 'what once was,' while re-establishing a new sense of identity.

Our research shows Memory Books are a useful tool to help children following their childhood losses due to death, disease, poverty, abandonment, neglect, and discrimination. When a child is unable to process grief associated with loss, they may be unable to negotiate through normal developmental phases of life that include trust, autonomy, industry, and independence.*

A toddler who has lost his mother may question, "If my mother, who loved me leaves me who else will leave me?" As the child grows, she may have a difficult time trusting others.

Although a Memory Book may seem like a simple idea, it has the capacity to help a child build self-esteem, hope, and confidence to live fully.

*Braband, Barb. Faris, Tamara. Wilson-Anderson, Kaye. (2014). Evaluation of a memory book intervention with orphaned children in South Africa. Journal of Pediatric Nursing, July/Aug 2014.

Since our inception in 2005, Memory Books has:
Trained coordinators of Memory Book Clubs and distributed thousands of memory books across

African continent countries of Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Malawi, DR Congo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia

Southeast Asia countries of India, The Philippines, Indonesia, China

North and South America countries of USA, Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Ecuador

European countries of Romania

"When I got my Memory Book, I changed inside. It happened so fast I cannot explain it."
-a Nigerian girl, 16

What is a Memory Book Club?

Memory Book Clubs give children an opportunity to come together with other children to discover, "I am not alone. There are others who have experienced loss often similar to my own. My life matters to God. I am somebody."

Memory Book Clubs are sponsored and facilitated by representatives and caregivers in the children's villages, schools, and churches. Each representative receives training in the use and value of Memory Books for children living with loss.

During a Memory Book Club in India, children took turns sharing a personal thought. Each child took a turn holding a 'talking stick' as they spoke, while their peers listened without offering correction or ridicule. 

During Memory Book Club training for church leaders in Rwanda, a young man asked, "Doesn't retelling the details of what the child has experienced produce more trauma?" This young man himself had experienced the loss of his father during the 1994 genocide. When asked how he had felt when he once stood and shared the details of his father's murder, he responded, "It felt good to talk about it."

Memory Book Clubs provide a safe place for children to share their stories, feelings and fears, and rediscover their hopes and dreams.

"The greatest thing you can do for a grieving child is sit close and be a witness to their story."   - Joan Schweitzer Hoff, Retired Director of Program Development at the Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families, Portland, Oregon