Vol. 27, No. 2 Winter 2005

Vol. 27, No. 2 Winter 2005 (pdf)

Libraries around the world

This issue of Ngoma focuses on libraries – for the hearing impaired, for school dropouts and potential drop-outs, for girls and women, and for those in remote areas.

Our first article, by author Margriet Ruurs, is about her new book detailing unusual “mobile” libraries – with the reading materials delivered by elephants, horses and camels, by bicycle and boat.

Coincidentally, a new documentary is about to be issued on the same topic. Titled Remote Access: Distant Libraries of the World, it will be aired on CKCO-TV in Kitchener, Ontario, on Sunday, January 1, at 6:30 p.m. If you don’t have access to that TV channel, the documentary will be available soon on DVD through CODE. Featured in the documentary is CODE’s executive director Yvonne Appiah. She was interviewed by director/writer Fawn Fairfoul and CTV producer/cameraman Paul Francescutti and has keenly followed the documentary’s development, which has been funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. See page seven for more information.

The camera visits a ‘rural’ library on the Amazon River that founder Dr. Nancy Dunn coordinates from her nearby home. Viewers witness children using the library, along with an afternoon sewing club for older women.

In eastern Kenya, the ‘mobile’ camel library carries a tent and books to the hinterlands to children who cannot access the local library. And in western Kenya the ‘mobile’ library is a donkey pulling a cart full of books to rural schools.

CODE works with our partners to assess the learning needs of children and community members and designs programs that work to support the situation and the needs of all. Our programs are committed to finding creative ways to increase education and literacy no matter what the challenges are.

Bringing books to children around the world

by Margriet Ruurs

Many years ago I read an article in the Vancouver Sun about the Kenya National Library Service. Officials were concerned that children in isolated villages did not have access to books, and families of wandering herders in remote desert areas were never introduced to the world of reading. Dedicated librarians wanted to change this but the sandy roads were often impassable. The only way to transport a heavy load was by camel. Thus, the Kenyan Library camel train was born.

Reading the article, I realized that I had never lived in a place without access to a library. Growing up in The Netherlands, not long after WW II, I was fortunate to have parents who supplied me with books and took me on weekly trips to the local library. Andrew Carnegie said: “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the free Public Library.” Many children around the world, however, do not have that access to lead them towards literacy.

The article about Kenya’s camel library piqued my curiosity and I started to do research to find out how else in the world children might get books. I didn’t know, at the time, where it would lead – to a book of my own.

I used the Internet and ‘googled’ for words like “mobile - library - remote - books.” I started to narrow in on other unique mobile library projects around the world. Slowly, I delved into more reading materials, discovering the name of someone who delivered books in an unusual manner. Sometimes it took years of persistent research to make an actual contact.

I found someone in Azerbaijan who told me how a blue truck loaded with books made its way to children in wartorn areas of his country. The children lived in poverty and the truck full of books brought a little bit of happiness. “For us,” said the librarian, “the mobile library is as important as air or water!”

I discovered that children in Thailand receive books even if they live in remote jungle villages. Mr. Surapong Chaiwong coordinates trips into the jungle of Thailand by elephant! Boxes of books, medicine and writing materials are loaded on to elephants who walk, with their keepers, for many days to reach their destination.

Discovering these stories, I got more and more excited about sharing this information. Turning the stories into a book, however, meant having to obtain photos. For countries that struggle to bring books to children, this isn’t easy. But the volunteers and librarians who work with these mobile libraries are keen to share their stories. They are proud of their accomplishments and, somehow, managed to find or borrow a camera. I started to receive envelopes full of wonderful photos: beaming children’s faces in Papua New Guinea, pictures of a bicycle loaded with books in Peru, a boat library in Indonesia, and children reading books on the backs of horses and camels in Mongolia’s Gobi desert. I also found a publisher who shared my belief that this was a story worth sharing. My Librarian Is A Camel is a photo collage of some of the unique mobile libraries I encountered. I hope that it will help to create awareness of the need for books in developing countries. I also hope that it may help children, and adults, in developed countries to realize how fortunate we are to have access to public libraries full of free books!

Teacher training and the impact on Senegal’s national education policy

by Mariame Kanté, BLD, and Willy Rangira, CODE

Since its creation in 1994, CODE’s partner in Senegal – Bibliothèque-Lecture-Développement (BLD) – has had an impressive record of achievement. It has established 36 school libraries and four public libraries, distributed more than 100,000 books throughout the nation, organized five reading competitions in various regions, provided training in library management to teacher-librarians, and published nine children’s stories in French and indigenous languages. Since 2001, it has also held five annual youth book fairs, each drawing more than 6,000 visitors.

The recognition BLD enjoys from ministerial officials has slowly but surely progressed and has brought about significant changes in the national education policy, such as quality training related to reading instruction and provision of books. In addition, BLD has contributed – in collaboration with the education ministry – to the establishment of a national school library policy.

BLD has also made considerable efforts to draw the education ministry’s attention to the importance of training teachers in library science and reading instruction methods. With BLD’s expertise, a manual designed to support the curriculum of teacher training schools was developed and introduced in a number of schools as a pilot project.

BLD’s efforts recently led to the signing of a partnership agreement with the education ministry to implement a national education policy. The agreement sets out the conditions for collaboration and strengthens the privileged relations that exist between the partners. It covers mutual aid, shared responsibilities and, above all, BLD’s contribution as an organization with expertise in reading instruction and school library management. In more concrete terms, the collaboration with BLD will enable the ministry to establish a library service in primary schools to meet the needs of teachers and pupils related to educational documentation, general culture, leisure, support for reading instruction and popularization of computers.

Like most CODE partners, BLD contributes greatly to the primary education scene and its expertise continues to be recognized by administrative authorities, educational services and local communities.

Numerous studies on education and the mental development of young children have shown that without the methodical assistance of teachers – through training courses such as those given by BLD – books contribute little to the social and intellectual development of the child. BLD therefore believes it is just as essential to train teachers in how to make better use of books – information books and leisure books – as it is to establish school libraries.

BLD has therefore trained two teachers from every new school that has recently joined the network, in addition to the five training sessions in library management provided between 1995 and 2000 to teacher-librarians in the CODE program. Other similar projects, such as a library network funded by Plan International, also took advantage of these sessions.

Each of the 20 school libraries in the CODE-BLD network is equipped with a computer system, and this has also required BLD training. The system has proven helpful not only in library management, but also in assisting teachers with exam preparation.

To promote reading among children in impoverished regions, agencies like CODE and BLD continue to involve decision-makers with a view to greater accountability and sustainability. The agreement between the education ministry and BLD is a step in the right direction since it is aimed, on the one hand, at bringing books closer to children throughout Senegal and, on the other, at providing teachers with fairly systematic training.

Encourage girls and women to use libraries

by Tesfaye Dubale, CODE-Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, fewer girls than boys enroll for primary school, particularly in rural areas, and not surprisingly, fewer girls and women use the rural reading rooms established to provide access to books. Now reading rooms are introducing special programs to encourage female readers.

CODE-Ethiopia is involved in 62 rural reading rooms in five regions. Teacher-librarians, reading room management committees and teachers are trained to run the reading rooms, which are supervised and guided by the district education office. Each reading room is provided with essential furniture and appropriate books in local languages and English.

One aim of these reading rooms is to assist children, particularly girls, to have access to books; however, the reading rooms are still dominated by male users. There are various reasons for this. Culturally, girls and women are expected to stay home after school, occupied by home chores and other tasks. Parents do not understand the value of libraries or are over-protective of their daughters. Teachers do not encourage girls to use the reading rooms. And sometimes girls are deterred by the lack of relevant books.

To counter these problems, the reading rooms have devised different ways of encouraging girls and women to use their facilities. A reading room in Addis Alem, for example, has set aside Thursdays for girls and women readers only.

The reading room attendants at Wolonkomi, Arjo and Wuchale are using local community associations to promote the reading rooms. They ask each member to encourage his wife and daughters to use the library.

Addis Zemen, Frewoyeni and Woretta reading rooms give book loan priority to girls and women. They can keep books for a longer period, which gives them more opportunity to read the borrowed items.

Ginchi and Yayo have special reading rooms for girls and women where they can chat freely and discuss matters related to school activities.

Meanwhile, some reading rooms like Teji, Haik and Wuchale have established female book clubs. Each club selects and borrows books for members for a certain period and posts lists of books of interest to female readers on the reading room wall. The reading room encourages the club by giving priority to members, and the girls and women compete in reading, with the names of keen readers listed.

In Hurumu and Emdebir, the government has constructed girls’ student hostels for those who come from far away. Usually these girls go home for the weekend. The hostel is a safe place. With CODE-Ethiopia support, a minilibrary is provided in the hostel, which has many advantages. Staying at the hostel frees the girls from family chores and gives them more time to read and to discuss the books.

In some areas, the reading room attendants (especially women librarians) visit parents and discuss matters related to school activities and library use. They urge parents to allow girl students to attend the reading room. But they have to be patient – they may have to visit the parents many times before the request is granted.

Door-to-door promotion is also used. Female book club members go from house to house with books in hand, talking to families.

In the Debre Tabor, Haik and Addis Alem districts, satellite “reading corners” set up in rural schools receive boxes of books for a week or two at a time from the district reading rooms. This means that female users don't have to travel long distances to borrow books, they have more time for reading, and their safety is assured.

Project Love kits of school supplies are another incentive. They are assembled by CODE-Ethiopia each year and are usually given to those students who use the reading rooms frequently. This encourages girls and women to attend. Also, the assistant librarians selected from among the students are often female; they are more reliable and trustworthy, and female users are more comfortable seeing female librarians.

As another encouragement, girls are invited to participate in special recess and lunch-break presentations at many schools. They present stories they have read in the libraries, perform drama, and encourage their peers to use the library.

Some of these measures to encourage girl readers are temporary solutions. As girls and women develop reading habits and self-confidence, it is expected that they will use the library regularly just like their male friends and incentives will no longer be needed.

Literacy boost for Kenya’s hearing impaired

by Peter Muthini Katoni, Kenya Book Foundation

Thanks to a generous CODE donor in Canada who prefers to remain anonymous, two schools for the hearing impaired in Kenya now have libraries for their students.

Kenya has 29 schools for the hearing impaired, five of which are secondary schools. The Kenya Book Foundation (KBF) is working with two of these – Reverend Muhoro School for the Deaf, a secondary school, and Tumu Tumu School for the Deaf, which serves primary students – to develop effective school libraries to meet the diverse learning needs of all students.

This support started in earnest in November 2004 when I met in Kenya with CODE’s Sean Maddox and Michael Watetu, a hearing technician from Karatina in Nyeri district. We deliberated on how to set up the project. The KBF’s Board of Directors was keen to work with CODE on this worthwhile endeavor, and KBF sought professional advice on establishment of these libraries from its longstanding collaborator in literacy promotion, the Kenya National Library Service (KNLS), and from the Kenya Institute of Special Education. The Institute visited the schools and identified the various book needs. The KNLS Karatina librarian showed the school principals the library setting they would need and invited the teacherlibrarians to visit their library for free training on basic librarianship skills.

So far, 230 hearing impaired students and 570 normal hearing children have benefited from the libraries. They use an integrated learning environment with 690 North American and 492 locally published books.

On the day that the first batch of books were received at the schools, the hearing impaired and the normal hearing students expressed their delight at the generous contribution. Teachers and parents were also elated.

Arrangements are being made for other schools in the neighborhood to benefit from the CODE donor’s generous gesture. This worthy initiative has been helpful to the nearby Kaheti Primary School; its administration is now soliciting funding from the area’s Constituency Development Fund for additional equipment for their library.

The Kenya Book Foundation sees this as a great step forward – support to people with special needs is a highlight in its 2003-2008 Strategic Plan. Additional support in this direction would go a long way towards reducing the literacy and social problems facing students in the remaining 27 institutions for the hearing impaired.

Computer use tempts students to improve reading skills

by Karen De Souza

The author works with Red Thread in the community of Charlestown in the south end of Guyana’s capital, Georgetown

The Red Thread library was set up three years ago as a service to the low-income community in which our centre is based. The library is one component in our work to improve literacy levels among youth who might have dropped out or been tempted to drop out of school and formal education.

We spoke with teachers at the schools in our neighborhood about the plan to start a library, and they provided the first members by encouraging their students to join. Children and youth borrowing books are asked to read or to relate the story when a book is returned, and from the earliest days we found that the majority of our members could not read, or were reading well below average for their age. To address the problem, the library assistants now read to and with the children.

The second component of our literacy program is a graded reading class that runs after school, twice weekly. The challenge here is to place out-of-school youth and older in-school youth in groups that match their reading skills without the potential embarrassment of working with much younger children. We also face the challenge of irregular attendance, particularly with out-of-school youth, because of competing demands on their time.

The computer class is the third component of our program, and this acts as an incentive to all members of the library and reading class – they might be half-hearted about reading, but they all want to use the computer! The computer class is designed to teach some basic Windows and word-processing skills, as well as the recognition of words in the Windows menus. We have now added a second class that uses reading and phonics software. We also have two days set aside so that graduates or participants in the computer classes can come in to practise their computer skills.

Class participants have organized concerts, and their parents have been invited. We also organize reading and spelling competitions that allow participants to show off their skills. We have held one meeting with parents, and our plan this year is to work more closely with them to get parents more engaged in their children’s learning work.

We know from some teachers that the children in their classes are improving, but we continue to search for ways to refine our measurement of their increasing reading and language skills. We also have to continually review the design of our programs because the population is mobile – households move in search of improved housing or in search of work. While our numbers continue to rise and there continues to be a demand for our services, only a minority of current participants have been involved in the classes or library from the beginning.

Partnering with schools for schools

by Marilyn Lohnes, Children’s Services Librarian, Fredericton Public Library, N.B.

I have little doubt that most public libraries have at some point struggled with creating solid partnerships between themselves and local schools. Program ideas abound, but library staff often find that the interest in a particular program dissipates after one or two years.

Fredericton Public Library, in New Brunswick, has been offering Project Love for a number of years now. Since Project Love focuses on literacy, learning and reading, there is a natural connection between the library and surrounding schools. We recognized that link early, and strove to make Project Love a library/school partnership in Fredericton.

Each year the library invites a school that has not yet been involved in Project Love to participate in a special program, usually held at the library. The program begins with a general introduction to Project Love – what it is, how it works, and which countries are involved for the year. With New Brunswick being an officially bilingual province, students have the wonderful choice of selecting which country to support.

Once the general introduction to Project Love is made, we progress to comparing school supplies in Canada and a developing country. We select three volunteers to help us with this demonstration. The first volunteer represents a child in Canada. He or she is given a box to hold school supplies. Students are asked to define what exactly they would need to get them through a school year. Pencils, pens, pencil crayons, math sets, binders and text books are added to the box, and the weight is soon buckling the knees of the participating student!

The second volunteer represents a child in the named Project Love country. He or she is also given a box, but the only inclusions are one pencil, one eraser, one notebook, and one ruler. We explain that this may be all that a child receives for the entire year.

The third student then takes his or her place in the line-up, representing another child in the named Project Love country. We explain that there may not be enough supplies for each child to receive a kit, so sometimes children have to share their Project Love supplies with another student. We break the pencil in half, sharpening both ends, and have both students stand beside their school supplies box. A presentation of this type sparks a lot of conversation among the students. They are keen to learn more about the country, the children, and the conditions. We suggest follow-up visits to the library to find out more information on the country, and we assemble Project Love kits with the class.

We have also had some very special Project Love programs at Fredericton. We had a visit from Mr. Lipangala Minzi, then the Executive Director of the Children’s Book Project of Tanzania. He fascinated the children with stories about Tanzania, and read a story composed by children there. Another visit featured CODE’s Garth Brooks, who gave fascinating background information on Project Love.

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