A wealth of knowledge is hosted in our newly established Prof. Fred Opio Ekong Memorial Library, in the form of thousands of academic publications and hundreds of novels; and with loads more publications promised to be donated. Located within our CPAR Uganda Lira Learning Centre, our Library is intended to access and expose its users to knowledge that will nurture their active citizenship and so it is a crucial component of our programme to mentor young adults into innovators against poverty.
Many Ugandan young adults who should be the primary actors in taking action against poverty in our communities are often economically challenged to do so and are excluded from participating in spaces in which important decisions that have significant impact on our lives are made. The exclusion mostly arises from young adults having insufficient knowledge and comprehension of pertinent issues, which makes their participation ineffective, even though, sometimes, they be physically included.
Our library is operating under the social enterprise model; meaning that access to our library's resources, including study areas, is through membership application and payment of fees. This is to enable us to procure the necessary human resources, electricity and utilities for the function of the library. In a manner which assures long term sustainability, therefore, through paying their library fees, this project will access a wealth of knowledge to economically disadvantaged young adults.
Standards of living will improve for households of at least 70 percent of benefiting young adults and of others within their communities that come into contact with them. This is because benefiting households will actively engage in agricultural production for dietary diversity and nutrition, income generation and environmental conservation; they will improve their social and economic well-being; and benefiting young adults will participate in public discourse and will lobby for public services.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
