Dorna Foundation promotes cultural activities through publishing, storytelling, art workshops, and community programmes across diverse communities.
The Dorna Foundation creates positive social and cultural change through literature and art. We promote cultural activities for all ages, support access to meaningful literary and artistic experiences, and encourage connection, creativity, and learning across communities.
We are committed to inclusive cultural exchange and long-term growth. We believe literature and art help people imagine, reflect, connect, and participate in public life.
They support emotional development, cultural understanding, lifelong learning, and community cohesion. We exist to make these benefits more visible and more widely accessible across age groups and backgrounds.
"Dorna" means crane, inspired by the thousand paper cranes myth, a symbol of hope, healing, and collective wishes. Dorna
Across every culture and every age, people have told stories: in words and on canvas, in song and on stage, in image and in gesture. Art and literature, in all their forms, are how we make sense of our lives and pass that sense on to one another.
When someone steps inside a story, whether read in a book, seen on a wall, heard in music, or witnessed in a performance, they live, for a moment, a life that is not their own. They feel another person's joy, fear, and longing. This is how empathy is built: not by being told to care, but by spending time, again and again, inside someone else's world.
Art and literature also carry our histories. They preserve what would otherwise be lost (voices, places, moments) and let those voices travel across borders, languages, and generations. They build the kind of understanding that policy and data alone cannot reach. This is why we believe investing in cultural access is investing in the future.
Each week we put one work in front of you, with a few words about why it matters. A painting, a poem, a film, a song — slow and small, on purpose.
From publishing to community events, our work takes many forms, all rooted in making literature and art more accessible.
Magazines, journals, and curated collections of essays that bring diverse literary voices to a wider audience.
Recurring reading sessions for children, designed to spark curiosity, build literacy, and create joyful shared experiences.
Hands-on creative programmes for participants of all ages, from illustration and calligraphy to collaborative art projects.
Gatherings, readings, and discussions that bring communities together around literature, art, and shared cultural heritage.
Guided group reading and literary discussion sessions that deepen engagement with texts and foster dialogue.
Donation-funded children's book subscription programmes delivered in partnership with local organisations around the world.
Each Dorna programme connects literature, art, and community. The flagship initiative is Damavand Books for Kids; alongside it we run literature initiatives like Narvan Magazine and Unedited (a collective archive of birth stories from mothers around the world), an art-donation pipeline with Doost Art Gallery, and an international magazine made by and for children.
A planned children's book subscription initiative in partnership with Ketabe Damavand bookstore in Tehran, to launch after ANBI approval.
ketabedamavand.com
This initiative is currently in preparation. Once ANBI status is approved, donors will be able to fund curated, age-appropriate monthly book packages for children from families with limited access to books, coordinated with local implementation partners.
One of Dorna’s literature initiatives, a magazine of essays, translations, and emerging voices from the Persian-speaking world and its diaspora.
naarvanmag.com
Narvan brings together essays, translations, and creative writing from established and emerging contributors. As one of Dorna’s literature initiatives, it helps the foundation make thoughtful writing more visible, across borders and across generations of readers.
A collective archive of birth stories from mothers around the world, told in their own words. The first edition of Unedited, a planned series of open archives for voices that are usually edited out.
theuneditedproject.github.io/birthstories
An open archive of birth experiences, joyful, painful, ordinary, complicated, all of it. Submissions are accepted in any language, and stories are published in the language they were written in. The project deliberately holds the full spectrum of where and how women give birth: in hospitals, in shelters during war, in fields, in corridors where no one speaks the language, surrounded by loved ones, or completely alone. Birth Stories is the first edition of Unedited, Dorna's planned series of collective archives for voices that are usually edited out.
An artist-led donation pipeline run with Doost Art Gallery in Amsterdam. Artists donate works; sale proceeds fund Dorna’s programmes.
doostgallery.com
How it works: an artist donates a piece to Doost Art Gallery, marking it for the Dorna programme. The gallery exhibits and sells the work, and the entire sale price is transferred to the Dorna Foundation to fund our literature, art, and community initiatives. It is a low-friction way for the artistic community to turn creative work into long-term cultural support.
An international children’s magazine, children submit, edit, and receive it. Both digital and printed.
By children, for children
An international magazine made by the children who read it. Young contributors send in paintings, stories, comics, and other creative work; a children’s editorial board helps shape each issue. The magazine is published in both digital and printed editions and distributed across borders, giving children everywhere a place where their work, their voices, and their tastes set the direction.
Children, send us your drawings, stories, jokes, puzzles, anything you make. By post or online. We will write back.
Making literature and art available to everyone, regardless of background or means.
Serving diverse audiences across ages, languages, and cultures with openness.
Operating with clear governance, honest finances, and public accountability.
Building bridges across cultures and encouraging international dialogue.
There are many ways to support the foundation's mission, whether through donations, volunteering, partnership, or simply spreading the word.
Fund book subscriptions, workshops, and cultural programmes directly. Tax-deductible giving will open in the Netherlands as soon as our ANBI status is confirmed.
Get in touch about giving →Contribute your time and skills to events, story times, publishing, translation, or programme design.
See open roles & apply →Schools, libraries, NGOs, and cultural organisations, let's collaborate on programmes that reach more readers.
Start a partnership conversation →We collaborate with schools, libraries, NGOs, publishers, and cultural institutions to extend our reach and deliver meaningful programmes.
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We believe in full transparency. Here is an overview of how the foundation's funds are managed.
The foundation's assets, income, and surpluses are used solely to further its charitable objects and are not distributed to founders or board members.