Girl-centered books to 60 village libraries

In our report last week we noted we would be purchasing books for the re-opened Koumbia library in August. We jumped the gun, and purchased the books yesterday (see photos). The Burkina Faso FAVL coordinator is going down to the southwest to visit some of the libraries, so we are taking advantage of that trip.

In other news, the multimedia center in Houndé has produced two more children's books. These are written by students in the Houndé region and illustrated by a telented teacher in the town. The current stories are about young women dealing with pressure for early marriage, and a book about women's activities in the villages. Visit the FAVL website for more information.

We are grateful to the donors for this project. We anticipate that in August we will go to the local bookstores in Ouagadougou and purchase about $100 worth of books, to be supplied to the recently re-opened library of Koumbia in southwestern Burkina Faso.

In other FAVL news:

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 continue to support 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. We completed 22 summer reading camps last summer 2018, serving more than 550 4th and 5th graders. The 25 kids selected for each camp got a big injection of age-appropriate books, learned many new games, discussed hygiene tips, and made masks and comic books. We hope that many of them will become life-long readers.

In Ghana, our able partner organization CESRUD and its library coordinatorcontinue to manage the three libraries of Sumbrungu, Gowrie-Kunkua, and Sherigu. These libraries regularly receive 30+ visits a day. 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.

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