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Anne Moore at Kawangware Library |
KidsLibs Trust founder Anne Moore returned to Kenya in April, after seven months in Scotland. She returned with renewed determination to bring a true reading culture to life in Kenya. She spoke with Trustee Susan Phillips about what she's been up to and what she is doing now. New Relationships These seven months in Scotland were long months! But I came away with some great new links: we have a relationship now with the Scottish Book Trust. We are in communication with Edinburgh children's librarians -- these are librarians who can give us support via e-mail on professional issues. And we have links now with the Scottish Africa Center, which is an organization for Africans living in Scotland, who often feel quite isolated and are anxious to have some stronger connections with Africa. |
And we now have a wonderful supporter, Susanne Garnett, taking on the job of establishing KidsLibs Trust as a charity in England and Wales. She's finding trustees, establishing the trust document, basically creating a whole new organization. This is so important because it will mean we can apply for funding to organizations that restrict their giving to registered UK charities.
Finally, through sponsoring a team of runners in the Edinburgh half-marathon in April we not only raised some money, but tapped into a great group of energetic young college students. These are young people who really want to make a difference, and when they want to do something, they just do it!
Going Rural
Now I'm back in Gacharageini, in Muran'ga district, and so so happy to be there. With Patrick, I'm working to organize the building of a new library -- training staff, reaching out to the community with information and an invitation to get involved. It's a beautiful area, almost entirely given over to tea-growing on small holdings. It's been in tea since about 1902. So it's very green, very lush and cool. It is extremely rural -- you'll see very few cars, no tractors at all, the tea-picking is all done by hand.
The community is very focused on education, there are many schools in the area, both primary and secondary. One of the schools has some facilities for mentally disabled students, and we hope to be able to work with that population when the library opens. It's a completely Kikuyu area, and very strongly Catholic. We're working closely with the Catholic church there, which is providing the space where we will build the library, but are being very clear throughout, in our discussions and our signed agreements, that like all of our libraries this one is open to all people, all religions, all tribes.
It's very different from our other rural library in Sipili, which is a very mixed area with a lot of inter-tribal conflict.
But the need for information is the same, and the the need to learn a new attitude towards books and reading -- for pleasure, for real-world information. I think it will be very important for the staff to make connections with our staff in other libraries and to come to our meetings in Nairobi. We have seven staff trainees, all in their 20s, and only one has been to Nairobi -- which is only about 3 hours away. But the education levels are good.
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More for Family Reading We've recently secured the funding we need to bring Little Hands, Big Steps -- our early childhood literacy program -- into all KidsLibs centres. This is a great, simple, effective program that provides some basic training to parents and caregivers of very young children, then sends them home with a bag stuffed with a variety of appropriate books to share with their children at home. Each family enjoys the books in the bag for a week, then comes back to the library and trades the bag in for a new bag with a different set of books. The program runs for 10 weeks, and ends with a certificate and each child taking home a book to keep. This has been really appreciated by the families that have taken part, and caregivers report that their littlest ones are really getting into books and enjoying them. So now I'm putting together funding proposals for Next Steps, which will carry the concept forward to slightly older kids, 3 to 5, to give these children a real head start before they show up at school at age 6. So many children here have no books at all in their homes. So, lots to do! |
Decorating Book Bags for LHBS |
