Help 80 Secondary Pupils in Niger Read and Write

Our School Library Bigger and Better !

At Les Amis de Hampaté Bâ, we work towards helping underprivileged Nigerien children to attend school and we supply Hampaté Bâ School with educational materials to reduce costs.  Our aim is to give young Nigeriens access to a good education allowing them to attain a better quality of life than their parents and grandparents.

We are proud to announce that thanks to your donations for 250 new books and shipment costs and thanks to a gracious gift of beautiful books from the personal collection of one of our teenage supporters in France, we were able to send 7 cartons of fabulous books this summer to the Hampaté Bâ School to enrich their library even more than before!

Our students are lucky! Just think that by comparison, most Nigerien students who attend school have never owned a book of their own. In many classrooms of other schools, 10-20 students share one textbook. And the majority of schools do not have a functional library within their walls. The now very well furnished library at Hampaté Bâ will help create a culture of literacy within the school and will provide the tools of empowerment to students and their teachers.

It's pretty amazing because our students need more influence from literature, said Hampaté Bâ Principal Hassane Baro, who started sorting the books the moment he saw the cartons.

As Mr Baro was going through the books, the school secretary, Haoua, squealed upon spotting books from Mariama Bâ and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because she had seen those two women authors on TV!

Previously, Hampaté Bâ students paid visits to the French Cultural Center library, but the visits were stopped because of the distance and the difficulty of organization, Now Hampaté Bâ students have a well-furnished library inside their own school.

I think that the soul of any school is its library, says Haoua, the secretary with a huge smile on her face.

Mr Baro says he is hoping that the teachers will also learn how to make good use of the library, thus improving the learning process. These donations will encourage teachers to do more interesting things with the students. What a great way to begin our new school year. What a wonderful surprise for our students!

This donation of books will encourage the reading habits of the learners and develop in Hampaté Bâ students the ability to learn from books in their library with and without teachers. It will also breakdown the strict divisions which the school timetable often creates between different subjects and thus enhance social training.

Thank you for helping us move ahead in our challenge to provide a quality education and to give more to those who have less ! Keep the donations coming and we will find ways to keep underprivileged students in school ! Your help is precious and vital to us and to them !

We could not have done this incredible library without your help!

Thank you so much !