By Melinda McRostie | Founder & Director
Dear Supporters,
Even though the time has come to close our Library campaign, that doesn't mean our work will stop! Here's an overview of the Library's project for 2022.
2022 - Overview
Our Multilingual Library project continued to serve the residents of the Mavrovouni camp and the local community by providing a vast and diverse selection of books and materials. Last year, 835 books were borrowed, both from our OpenSpace Library in Mytilene and our pop-up library inside the camp. Farsi, English and Somali have been the languages that have been requested and sought out the most.
Camp Updates
Since the last days of December 2022, our project was forced to adapt to changing conditions in the camp. The Library container that we used for children’s recreational activities and as a support to the pop-up library was removed from the Education Zone by the owning organization in order to be repurposed elsewhere. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to secure another container in the Education Zone. While our impact has diminished due to this external factor, we promptly adapted by diversifying the activities carried out at our Games Station. Now, children’s board games, such as puzzles and memory cards, coloring and drawing materials, and children’s books, are available there and are actively used every day.
Moreover, in the last weeks of December, we started a partnership with Eurorelief and their staff working in the New Arrival Zone, to provide a selection of books (fiction and language learning) and recreational activities (such as children’s games, cards, dominos and the board game called Carrom) for the population housed there. They are currently carried out successfully and monitored weekly.
OpenSpace Updates
At the beginning of January 2023, the Parea Community Center kindly donated to us plenty of books and crafting materials, helping us expand our library collection and provide more material to our beneficiaries. We are immensely grateful for their support and contribution to the project.
Moreover, on the 24th of January, we organized and hosted an event at OpenSpace in celebration of International Day of Education, called “OpenDay at OpenSpace”. Many organizations and private schools participated and provided activities and workshops for both the local and refugee community. At this event, our Library Manager, Isabella, held a creative workshop with the aim of crafting bookmarks in different formats and different artistic techniques. The workshop was hugely successful and received great feedback from its participants! We were so excited to host such activities, and have the opportunity to engage and connect more with our community through the power of books and art.
2023 - Future Steps
While 2023 has only just begun, in these first two months around 270 books have already been borrowed.
Our efforts are always directed towards making sure that needs are fulfilled. Hence, in the new year we aim to use the remaining funding to expand our catalog and provide more alternatives as well as more language options, such as Amharic, for the different communities engaging with our project. The pop-up library inside the camp is open daily from 10am to 2pm and the OpenSpace library is also open from 10am to 6pm daily. People can come and choose any book they want from our vast and diverse selection of 7000 books in over 20 languages.
We are grateful for your support which allows us to provide books and activities to people living in the camp as well as to people who come to OpenSpace. If you would like to keep up to date with the Library's project and our work in general, you can do so by following our social media accounts here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/starfishfoundation.org
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starfish_foundation/?hl=en
We will now focus on our OpenBike Campaign for which we hope to have your support again. Your donations are extremely valuable to enable us to continue our work, which would not be possible without your generous contributions.
Sending our heartfelt thanks to you all.
The Starfish Team on Lesvos
Links:
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