Libraries in Sierra Leone

FAVL intern Anne-Reed Angino spent a couple months in Sierra Leone in October-November on a "scoping mission" to see where FAVL might best be able to contribute to development of village libraries in the country... We're working up an action plan, but in the meantime here are links to her photos of the libraries she visited.  (That is Kenema Regional Library, above, a government-run library.)  Also the libraries she was able to identify are now mapped on our Google Map of public libraries in Africa.  More coming soon.

Also, below is an extract from a blog by Clare, at Adventures in International Development, on one of the few small village library projects in the country, that impressed Anne-Reed (and me to, second-hand)... it is run by a local organization, cdpeace, and they are doing a great job.

I can't believe that somehow I have not yet written a post specifically about the Mapaki community library. Many of my evenings in Mapaki so far have been spent in the library. The library is open Monday to Friday evenings, from 7:30 - 9:30, or until the battery, charged during the day by the solar panel, runs out of juice, whichever comes first. If it's raining the library doesn't open, and if it is open, the kids usually scatter for home at the first hint of raindrops. The library here is really quite incredible (a few photos here: http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/MapakiLibrary02#, although they don't really do it justice!), and is already known about quite widely in the country. The library is so popular that the younger children have to be limited to one visit per week (Grades 1 - 5 on Monday to Friday evenings). The older children (Grades 6 and JSS students) and adults can come any evening. On any given night there could be 15 - 30 people in the library. Young kids looking at books, older kids studying or doing homework, volunteer teachers looking at teaching resources, and adults from the community reading or having a computer lesson. I often go with a book and just read in the electric light. Sometimes I bring my computer and do a bit of work, although this tends to attract a lot of attention :-)