Provide reading opportunities to schoolchildren

Greetings supporters of FAVL activities in Burkina Faso.  This project is still open, and we have received about $1300 out of the $5000 needed.  We will continue to explore alternative ways to implement the project.  Our activities in Tuy province continue and updates are available on the FAVL blog. 

This year 2015 has been extraordinarily busy for FAVL. In Burkina Faso, we embarked on a four year project to establish and support 20 libraries in two northern provinces. Most of the “FAVL time” of West Africa director Michael Kevane has been spent on helping the Ouagadougou office implement this project (as you may know he also has a full-time job as a university professor of Economics). We are happy to say thing are progressing well. Just this week we have done the training for 17 of the new librarians. Each commune has donated a building, which has been refurbished. Books and furniture have been ordered and delivered. We will be opening the libraries in early January 2016. Private donors have also supported another library in Sebba, so soon there will be 21 new libraries supported by FAVL in Burkina Faso.                                                                                

In Uganda, likewise, FAVL East Africa director Kate Parry has been busy (on top of her job as university professor of English). The Kitengesa Library Band (!) has already given several public performances, following generous donations of recordings of traditional Ugandan music and also of musical instruments. Kitengesa Community Library has submitted a proposal to the Yunus Social Business Foundation (created by Nobel Prize winner Mohammed Yunus) for building a guest house that would host volunteers and interns as well as researchers and tourists. This initiative would help raise revenues for the library. The Uganda Community Library Association, which FAVL supports, is preparing its upcoming annual conference in January. Interns from Douglas College in British Colombia this summer toured many UgCLA member libraries and posted descriptions to the UgCLA Facebook page. Do visit and “like” them!