Promote a love of reading in rural Swaziland

Our thousands of books have arrived and we’re thrilled (and buried!) They’ve gone through several sorts already, in preparation for registering and tagging.

First we checked to make sure that the content and reading level were appropriate for our preschoolers.  Books that were too high for preschool were shared with a local primary school.  After the initial sort, we began categorizing by topics that coincide with our educational programming. The groups include educational “themes” like animals, transport, community helpers, and food as well as concepts that highlight Learning Standards.

Our Learning Standards approach sets a framework for schools to provide support for the holistic (emotional, social and value, cognitive, language, and physical) development of children. This means that children are taught about self-control, problem-solving, argument resolution, persistence, and empathy in addition to the more typical schedule of colors, shapes, numbers, and writing. 

For library organization, we’ve decided to forgo the Dewey Decimal system. Instead, each topic grouping has its own color label for shelving.  The books covering “cognitive” concepts, like sorting, patterns, and time have red tags. “Social and value” books that address topics such as appreciating diversity, working together, and solving conflict will have blue tags.  With colors, teachers can easily find the topics they are looking for as they plan their lessons.

Thanks to generous donations, we’ve been able to purchase FileMaker Pro, which is software that allows us to build databases. This is where we register our books to keep inventory and how we’ll check them out.

The teachers are thrilled at the prospect of being able to check out more books.  Due to our limited supply before, we restricted checkouts to 3 books per school.  As teachers are now reading EVERY DAY to their children, they’re often asking to bend the rules in order to rent more at a time.  It’s terribly difficult to limit voracious readers, so we’re proud that we’ll soon be able to offer class boxes of 30 books at a time!