Build a library for 1500 children in Zambia

In the first quarter of 2026, we continued to hold health and wellness sessions, with notable highlights including a recent collaboration with Colgate to commemorate World Oral Health Day. This session brought together dental professionals who spoke to our children about the importance of oral hygiene and gifted them oral hygiene kits.

After a difficult year of fundraising in 2025, one of our advisors suggested that our organization undergo an institutional assessment to determine areas that need improvement, with the aim of strengthening systems and improving donor confidence.

According to our 2025 annual report, published in March this year, we surpassed our visitation target, increasing library visits by 50.5% compared to 2024. With 13,129 visits, we exceeded our goal of 10,000. Of these visits, 7,075 were from boys and 6,054 from girls. While we are encouraged by the strong turnout, we observed that boys accounted for 7.8 percentage points more visits than girls. Understanding the reasons behind this gap and exploring ways to encourage more balanced participation will be one of our goals for 2026. Reaching and exceeding our target was largely made possible through strong outreach to local schools, parents, and the wider community.

Of course, some challenges remain. As in previous years, we continue to face limited space for our activities, an imbalanced patron-to-staff ratio, staff turnover, electricity outages, and insufficient funding to run our programs as efficiently as we would like.

Despite these challenges, we remain committed to our mission, and we are grateful to everyone who continues to believe in and support our work at Natubelenge Children’s Library.

• 2025 Annual Report (PDF)
  

2025 was a generally good year for the library in terms of collaborations with other organisations. We managed to implement many programmes through partnerships. However, fundraising did not go as well as expected. Despite giving it our best, we faced challenges that have resulted in ongoing struggles with running costs this year.

In response, we have planned to explore alternative fundraising methods, such as the 100 Cents per Month campaign and the formation of a Friends of the Library group. We are also currently working on our annual report, which will provide detailed information on most of our 2025 activities.

In December 2025, our library turned 10, a significant milestone for the organisation. Looking back, we have served hundreds of children, addressing illiteracy challenges largely caused by overcrowded classrooms in public schools.

Although construction of the Makeni Library branch has not yet started, we have identified potential partners and held several meetings. In conclusion, we believe that 2026 will be a positive year, and we remain hopeful and resilient, just as we have been throughout the past 10 years.