This event was originally scheduled for tomorrow (April 22), but it’s been postponed until June 11, so now there’s time for you guys to make some plans if you’d like to attend. Thanks to Susan for the info.

Press Release from opusa.org:

Actress/author Mia Kirshner (THE L WORD, THE BLACK DAHLIA) and author James MacKinnon have joined forces with international relief agency Operation USA to bring creative writing field projects inspired by their acclaimed book, I Live Here to communities in need around the world. The program will launch in Malawi, Africa, with Kirshner and MacKinnon returning to work in the Kachere Juvenile Centre in Lilongwe, the boys prison documented in the 2008 book.

Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, with an HIV/AIDS rate of nearly twenty percent. I LIVE HERE is a creative writing, literacy and livelihood program that will work inside the Kachere Juvenile Centre – working to bring hope to children that have little reason to think their lives can improve.

“When visiting the youth prison in Lilongwe, I saw the extreme conditions that these kids live in. I saw that they are rapidly slipping through the cracks. What I saw is a cruel reality and gruesome future. One inmate wrote, “My goodness is my wisdom, is my strength is my future.” The impact of this leaves me no option but to do everything I can to help change the extremities that these children live under,” said Mia Kirshner.

“Operation USA is delighted to welcome Mia and James, and their dynamic program into our organization. Relief can take many forms, and giving a voice to those without much more than that can effect great change,” said Richard Walden, President and CEO, Operation USA.

Conditions in youth prisons in Malawi can be compared to the world’s worst refugee camps. The situations of the incarcerated youth can be compared to the plight of child soldiers. The need to make positive changes in the Kachere Juvenile Prison is urgent and extreme. The youth prison in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi, is typically home to some 100 prisoners between the ages of 11 and 18. The degraded state of prison conditions cannot be overstated; the children eat once a day, sleep in intensely crowded conditions, have no reasonable access to health care or legal assistance, and are extremely vulnerable to epidemic disease.

For more information about I LIVE HERE, visit http://www.opusa.org/whatwedo/ilivehere.html

I LIVE HERE is a project of Operation USA, an international relief agency that helps communities at home and abroad overcome the effects of disasters, disease and endemic poverty by providing privately-funded relief, reconstruction and development aid.

About Mia Kirshner and James (J.B.) MacKinnon

Mia Kirshner has worked as an actor in film and television; among her credits are Brian De Palma’s THE BLACK DAHLIA and THE L WORD. She began her acting career at the age of 17, playing a clairvoyant dominatrix in LOVE AND HUMAN REMAINS. Her performance earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination for a Genie Award (Canada’s Oscar). Kirshner starred in Atom Egoyan’s EXOTICA and co-starred with Kevin Bacon and Christian Slater in the Warner Bros. drama MURDER IN THE FIRST. Kirshner is also known to television audiences for her role on the popular Fox series 24, where she portrayed a mysterious would-be presidential assassin.

She recently traveled throughout the world compiling stories for I Live Here; a book that examines the lives of refugees and displaced people in four corners of the world. I Live Here is her first book.

J. B. MacKinnon is the award-winning author of Dead Man in Paradise and Plenty. A celebrated independent journalist, MacKinnon is a contributing editor to the magazines Adbusters, Explore and Vancouver. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Foundation Gold Award for travel writing, he splits his time between Vancouver and a cabin in northern British Columbia. MacKinnon’s latest book is The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating

About I Live Here, The Book

“Powerful. . . . A touching, gorgeously produced, and thoughtfully edited compilation of stories from the world’s trouble spots. . . . Combines reportage, photography, fiction, and comics to create a group portrait of the lives of refugees and displaced people worldwide.”

- New York Magazine

I Live Here is a visually stunning narrative – told through journals, stories, images and graphic novellas – in which the lives of refugees and displaced people become at once personal and global. Bearing witnesses to stories that are too often overlooked, it is a raw an intimate journey to crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi.

About Operation USA

Operation USA is an international relief agency that helps communities at home and abroad overcome the effects of disasters, disease and endemic poverty by providing privately-funded relief, reconstruction and development aid. Working with grass-roots partners on the ground, Operation USA provides material and financial assistance necessary in the face of a disaster, as well as to combat the effects of systemic poverty. Dedicated to rebuilding with commitment and listening to communities’ voices to determine the best way to assist them, Operation USA stays in the field long after many others leave. Long-term projects are supported that promote education and health services, sustainable development, leadership building, income generating activities and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable people worldwide.

Since 1979, the Los Angeles-based Operation USA has worked in 99 countries, delivering over $300 million for relief and development projects. Operation USA is a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize as part of “The International Campaign to Ban Landmines”; was named as one of Worth Magazine’s “100 Best Charities in America”; and, in addition to their Four Star rating, was recently named the “#1 Exclusively Privately Funded Charity” by watchdog group Charity Navigator.

Operation USA will celebrate 30 years of relief done right in 2009. Learn more and make secure donations at www.opusa.org.