Girl-centered books to 60 village libraries

Libraries and most other public activities in Burkina Faso were closed due to COVID19, in late March 2020. The government in July decided to start reopening, and the office of the mayor of Houndé decided to permit activities to resume. Officially, the pandemic has largely spared Burkina Faso, with only a few thousand cases, total, as of late July. It is impossible to know at present how accurate the official case tallies are.

FAVL-Burkina Faso, in consultation with local authorities, decided to reopen activities in mid-July. Schools remains closed until October.

Two workshop and refresher trainings were held for librarians in northern Burkina Faso, in Kaya and Kongoussi, in mid-July. FAVL staff have visited many of the libraries in Tuy province (libraries in the north and near international borders are threatened by an insurgency and travel is not advisable). Librarians are enthusiastic about opening and patrons have already started to come to borrow books.

Thanks for your support for libraries over the years! In coming months we will use available funds to purchase books to distribute to libraries.

Thanks for your support of this project over the past months. As you might imagine, the COVID-19 virus has been put a hold on most library activities. Libraries in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda have been closed following recommendations of local authorities.  One of the last activities done in Burkina Faso was to create a book about COVID-19 and how to prevent the spread of the virus. The book was distributed to the last visit to villages in Tuy province mid-March. Instead of reporting on recent activities, then we have a selection of photos from the last month (February) when libraries were open.  We are looking forward to eventual re-opening of libraries as soon as prudent.

Attached are photos from most recent book purchase (November 2019), for the library in Niankorodougou, in southwestern Burkina Faso. The library is well-supported by the office of the mayor and rural council.

Some brief updates about other library support: The Kitengesa library in Uganda continues to thrive. This year a health reading camp was held for adult women, focusing on women’s cancer. Another reading camp was held for teenagers, and a further women’s reading camp is planned for later in the year. The Kitengesa Library Band continues to practice and perform.

In Burkina Faso, we are currently supporting 34 community libraries. Terrorist activity in northern Burkina Faso unfortunately has meant that four libraries are temporarily closed due to danger (schools and administrative buildings are targets.) For the libraries that are open, we continue to do the best we can to provide regular assistance to mayors and rural councils in managing the libraries, supply select libraries with new books, train librarians, and offer salary support for some of the librarians. Our Burkina team continues to produce photos books for young readers as well as books written by young people and illustrated with local illustrators.

In Ghana, our able partner organization CESRUD and the library coordinator continue to manage the three libraries of Sumbrungu, Gowrie-Kunkua, and Sherigu. These libraries regularly receive 30 or more visits a day- about 1,000 visits each month. They are open for night reading, as they are now connected to electricity. Donors this year helped fix the fans (it gets to 110 degrees during the day!). After school reading programs were held in September and are planned for this summer. All three libraries received several hundred new books over the course of the year thanks to support from Biblionef Ghana and the Ghana Book Trust.

Updates and lots of photos from all three countries are regularly posted to the FAVL blog.

• Receitp for purchase of books (PDF)
  
• Receipt (PDF)
  

We are grateful to donors to this project over the past several months. As noted in the July report, we spend donations as they come in, once we get to about $100 of new donations.  We are still not there yet, so we have currently not purchased books specifically for this project.

Late August 2019 did see the opening of a new library in Koho, in southerwestern Burkina Faso. This new library has an initial stock of about 300 books, mostly children's books purchased locally in Ouagadougou. We hope that in the coming months we can continue to purchase books for the library, which is already seeing good usage,