Provide reading opportunities to schoolchildren

Greetings, supporters of FAVL's activities in Burkina Faso! Our mobile library project remains open, and we have received nearly $1375 (of the project goal of $5000) from generous supporters like you.   

The past few months have been extraordinarily busy for FAVL-Burkina Faso.  We embarked on a four-year project to establish and support 20 libraries in two northern provinces of Bam and Sanmatenga. Most of the “FAVL time” of West Africa director (and Santa Clara University professor of economics) Michael Kevane has been spent on helping the Ouagadougou office implement this large-scale project: refurbishing village-donated buildings, ordering furniture, and stocking books. Our efforts culminated with the February opening of the new libraries! We are happy to say things are progressing well. Just this past month we continued ongoing training for our new librarians. 

Private donors supported the establishment of another new library in Sebba, Yagha province, in the northeast corner of the country near the Niger border, which also opened earlier this year.  Thus, there are 21 new Burkina libraries supported by FAVL. Our activities in Tuy province continue and updates are available on the FAVL blog.

We are continuing to explore alternative ways to implement the mobile library project.  We need to reach an absolute bare minimum of $3000 in project funding to finance the purchase of the motorbike, fuel, and to stock the motorbike cart with a small selection of books.  So, we are 45% of the way to our interim project funding goal.  As the FAVL-Burkina team settles down into a more regular routine of managing 34 libraries, we envision soon hiring a director of the FAVL Houndé Multimedia Center, where locally-authored books are produced for all of FAVL's libraries, including the future mobile library.  The new director's responsibilities will include bringing the mobile library to a few villages in Tuy province.

We thank you for helping bring literacy to remote rural villages in Burkina Faso, and would greatly appreciate your continued financial support.