UgCLA began its operations as a committee of the National Book Trust of Uganda, and was successfully granted independent status as an NGO in July 2007. The association was officially launched in August the same year. It is working in affiliation with other NGOs, notably... Friends of African Village Libaries (FAVL) in the United States and Ka Tutandike in Britain and Uganda. It is also receiving substantial support from the US Embassy, which will fund the first distribution of grants to members, as well as the first training sessions. The association is made up of two categories of members: institutions (community libraries) and individuals who might wish to establish such libraries themselves. http://www.ugcla.org/aboutus.htm  Last week UgCLA hosted a workshop for community librarians... below are some photos.  I'll get a link to more photos and summary of the workshop soon.

Yikes... nobody will ever accuse FAVL of being an expensive failure.  Cheap failure, possibly.

"Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela's Misión Robinson Literacy Campaign"

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 57:1-30, October 2008

Daniel Ortega
Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, Caracas
Francisco Rodríguez
Wesleyan University

Abstract

We evaluate the success of the Venezuelan government's latest nationwide literacy program, Misión Robinson, using official Venezuelan government survey data. Controlling for existing trends in literacy rates by age groups over the period 1975-2005, we find at most a small positive effect of Misión Robinson on literacy rates, and in many specifications the program's impact is statistically indistinguishable from zero. This main result is robust to time series analysis by birth cohort and to state-level difference-in-differences estimation. The results appear to be inconsistent with recent official claims of the complete eradication of illiteracy in Venezuela, but they resonate with existing research on other adult literacy programs, which have usually been expensive failures.

But I have a good excuse; I've been slowly working through Elliot's Christmas presents... He was initially reluctant to read Discworld, a version of the novels by Terry Pratchett, but at some point he stopped finding it confusing and started thinking that Rinceweed the slightly cowardly wizard whose got a spell stuck in his head was a pretty cool, subtle character.  And so then he told me I should read it, so I did, and enjoyed it.  Again, same cheeky graphic novel humor of playing with established tropes but turning them a little inside out... about to fall of the edge of the disc... a low rope barrier stops them, and a debris collector scoops them up... And Death and other of the four horsemen get taught to play bridge by Two-flower... and why doesn't anything bad happen to Two-flower?!?

Here's a link to shows of some major African photographers... Shout-out to you guys... keep the images coming!

The photo:
Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko:
aus der Serie "Die Schönheit liegt im Auge des Betrachters"
© 2004 Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko

From Timothy Egan of the New York Times, in an article on the new iPad that will kindlepete:

The last outpost of books in Laredo was a second-tier chain store selling the usual ghostwritten celebrity tell-alls, branded fiction and political screeds for people who need more empty calories in their one-sided cable news diet. But if Denver were to lose Tattered Cover, or Portland lose Powell's, or Washington, D.C., lose Politics and Prose, it would be like ripping one lung from a healthy body.

Probably not would be like.  Curious about the imagery ... why ripped from a healthy body?  If the body were unhealthy, ripping the lung not as bad?

I was delighted to find Sorie Kondi's music on YouTube, after I had been able to both meet him and watch him perform while staying in Freetown, Sierra Leone.  Sorie Kondi is a street musician and is accurately identified as one of Sierra Leone's musical geniuses. To read a bit more about his music, story and instrument, click here.  Otherwise, listen and catch a glimpse of Freetown...   
 

"School libraries and language skills in Indian primary schools: A randomized evaluation of the Akshara library program"

Fang He, Evan Borkum and Leigh Linden

Abstract: We conduct a randomized evaluation of the impact of a primary school library program on children's language skills in a large Indian city. The program was implemented via a hub and spoke system, with physical libraries located in hub schools and spoke schools served by a mobile librarian. We find that the program had little impact on students' scores in a language test administered 16 months after implementation. The estimates are sufficiently precise to rule out effects larger than 0.13 and 0.11 standard deviations based on the 95 and 90 percent confidence intervals. The finding of zero effects holds true across mode of implementation, individual language competencies and subsets of the student population. We also find no impact on test scores in other subjects or on school attendance rates. One explanation for these findings could be that the treatment intensity was relatively low, with students visiting the program libraries only twice per month on average.

From Fang He's working paper website.  The full paper is here.  My one quick comment after quick read through the paper is they seem to not describe the actual content of the school libraries, especially the mobile spoke libraries- were they 30 books or 500 books?  Nor, again, after quick glance, do they describe the incentives of the school libraries- are they "volunteer teachers", are they paid staff with job security?  Who supervises them?  Also, negative results like this from randomized experiments are vulnerable to the "maybe project didn't work very well" critique, and the "maybe libraries only affect 5% of kids, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be funded" critique and the "I don't care, a school should have a library" critique.  The latter is my preferred critique, preferably yelled at loud volume while storming out of seminar room.

Koura Donkoui

Instituteur certifie

Chevalier de l ordre des palmes académiques

Cet homme est instituteur de formation en service  a l école Houndé C.  Il est en même temps le coordonnateur des bibliothèques de FAVL.  L'état burkinabè a reconnu ses mérites en élevant au grade de chevalier de l'ordre des palmes académiques suite aux résultats des examens solaires du CEP.  Il a présenté 87 élèves au cep et 85 élèves ont été déclaré admis soit un pourcentage de 97.7 pour cent.  Quel record !  Il a entre autre servi dans la région du sahel ou il a fait de l'éducation environnementale son chemin de bataille .il a appris aux enfants le jardinage la production des plants  les techniques de plantation le zai ...... Il a également parcouru la sous région dans le cadre des bibliothèques a savoir le Ghana le Sénégal le  Mali .... Très dynamique travailleur incontesté il est beaucoup apprécié par ses supérieurs hiérarchiques.  C est aujourd'hui un honneur pour FAVL de vous présenter cet homme.

(photo coming soon!)

Just got an estimate for solar lighting for one of the village libraries.  Costs are coming down, not too rapidly but indeed steadily.  Now about $1200 to install lighting.  Our experience is that once installed they require very little maintenance, occasional replacement of bulbs (fluorescent) and every 3-5 years the batteries have to be replaced.

We heard back from BetterWorldBooks yesterday, and our proposal did not win the vote... Congratulations to Reading Education Assistance Dogs who won the vote count, by a whopping margin too!  (See below.) 

Thanks to all the 3,714 people who voted for FAVL... we are really grateful!  We promise not to come asking for more votes anytime soon- we care about your goodwill.  In fact, we were joking about writing software for a click-bank, where you could do all your voting at once and that could be stored for application to particular voting contests.  Nah.

The library projects in Pobe and Bougounam in northern Burkina Faso will carry on.  We will be able to implement both projects, we sure, since they are both spearheaded by very dynamic Peace Corps volunteers (Emilie and Jen).  It might take longer, and it sure would have been nice to equip them fully, and move on to implementing more reading programs.

Name     Votes
1  Intermountain Therapy Animals Reading Education Assistance Dogs
(R.E.A.D.)     6,851
2  Mercy Learning Center of Bridgeport, Inc.      4,045
3  Friends of African Village Libraries     3,714
4  Open Books     3,517
5  University of Pennsylvania -- Netter Center for Community
    Partnerships     3,485
6  Children's Literacy Foundation (CLiF)     1,827
7  Shoulder to Shoulder Global     1,451
8  PEPY     1,340
9  BOSCO Uganda (Battery Operated Systems for Community
   Outreach)     660
10  The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library     439
Total Votes     27,329

A great online photography exhibit... see the slide show (diaporama)...

Les classes moyennes existent-elles donc vraiment à Abidjan ? Souvent issues de familles nombreuses en milieu rural, leur éducation les a menés en ville et leur permet d'émerger. Avec entre 1 et 7€ par tête et par jour, leur revenu peut sembler dérisoire pour les standards occidentaux, pourtant ils vivent mieux que les plus pauvres et restent loin de la minorité enrichie. Pour la plupart, ils ont un emploi stable leur permettant de construire leur avenir, bénéficient d'un logement en dur équipé (électricité, TV, frigo, ...) et investissent dans l'éducation de leurs enfants en les envoyant si nécessaire dans des écoles privées. Selon cette définition, ils représenteraient 30% de la population du pays et 40% des richesses. Pourtant tout n'est pas simple : outre la crise, la mondialisation se fait sentir au travers du yoyo des prix des aliments et du pétrole qui affecte directement le budget repas et transport des familles. Il faut donc sans cesse s'adapter. Subissant en outre de plein fouet la corruption, ils doivent faire preuve d'une créativité entreprenariale extraordinaire pour aller de l'avant. Étudiante qui risque toute sa bourse d'étude annuelle pour monter un cyber-café, businessman en herbe déscolarisé qui dirige d'une poigne de fer un réseau de réparation de photocopieuses, professeur d'allemand dont la paie famélique restée inchangée depuis 15 ans lui permettant seulement de rêver à devenir propriétaire de son appartement... Bien conscient que l'État ne peut plus seul leur assurer un emploi, le métier de fonctionnaire est vu aujourd'hui comme un tremplin assurant stabilité pour développer des activités privées (des "gombos") plutôt qu'une fin en soi : "l'avenir c'est pas dans un bureau !". Rencontre avec les classes moyennes d'Abidjan ...

I don't care if I may have posted this clip already, I love the way Leonard Wantchekon says, "If you don't trust people you know, it's over!" 

Leonard Wantchekon on the Lack of Intra-Community Trust in Benin from DRI on Vimeo.

Wanthchekon and Nathan Nunn have a paper arguing that low levels of trust in African societies are a legacy of the slave trade.  Since the data is all variation across regions in Africa, the argument is about the intensity of the slave trade.  But from my reading long ago on the slave trade, it seems to me that the nature of slave taking varied too (the sex ratios, age profiles, mechanisms for slave acquisition).  Plus the numbers (10-20 million people taken) don't add up to much on a per square kilometer basis... maybe 1 person per year captured for the cross-oceanic slave trade... compared with probably 10 people per sq. kilometer dying from communicable diseases, childbirth, etc.  And while Nunn and Wantchekon argue that in many anecdotes there are reports of neighbors "tricking" neighbors into slavery, it much have been just as likely that neighbors were banding together against raiders... and that people saved strangers from slavery, just as they would resist anywhere.  But the correlation (between numbers taken and low trust levels) remains... and a hard think to explain away as coincidence.

Two researchers at University of British Columbia, Maureen Kendrick and Shelley Jones, have been studying literacy practices in Uganda.  I was just reading a short paper they had on children's drawing and photography as ways to "access" representations and hopes of schoolchildren as they struggle to achieve full literacy in English through the Ugandan school system.  (The girl in the picture here is reading Young Talk, a newspaper directed to young people about HIV/AIDS and other sexual health issues, under a tree... the researchers notice the shoes and dress... reading is part of being more formal...)  I think there remains a lot of work to be done to make broader generalizations (the paper has a small sample), but it is a research method that doesn't get as much traction as it should.  Reminds me of Libby Wood's use of locally drawn maps to represent the civil war in El Salvador, and Karen Cerulo's semiotic analysis of national flags and anthems.

Pong because I'm going to link you back to Blattman's blog, as in all likelihood you came from there, and if you didn't, it is where you should go, for understanding development issues in Africa.

But while you're here, I'll link you also to our latest venture, that is just starting and I'm personally very excited about, which is starting to think about kivaing book production for African libraries.  Because honestly, what kid in a village wants to read a Barbie book?   (No offense to the big B, with whom my daughter has endless hours of fun, mostly involving cutting off hair and snipping clothes here and there and then lining them up for school).

But my friend and occasional collaborator Kathy Knowles got me started some years ago in thinking about producing books that are really super-relevant to kids in villages and towns in rural Africa.  And the more I thought about it the more I thought it might be nice to develop some kind of platform for developing a catalog of books in a nonprofit kind of way, to leverage the creative power of thousands of artists and writers.  So we are iterating slowly in that direction, and we have started with university students who were in Burkina Faso in the fall.  Their books are here.  All of them feature photos taken in the villages.  I guarantee you the young and adult readers in the villages just love this stuff!  Don't order any yet, because they have typos in them.  Fellow traveler Jonathan Thurston is doing something very similar focusing on secondary school students in Ghana.  Eventually we'll get to the same place.

I was having a conversation with my friend's father, who is a professor and researcher in the neuro-bio field, regarding my current trip to Sierra Leone and work with Friends of African Village Libraries. I attempted to explain the organization and my project as vaguely as you might explain something in a friendly passing conversation over cheese and crackers with the parents of your friend.  I was surprised to not quite get the normal response.  This individual began to argue and pose questions such as, "Why libraries?" "Why books... why not computers?" "Why not export something like a Kindle and have all books downloaded?" "Books are dying in the information world, why establish an ancient institution, when you could focus solely on new technology?"

I wasn't quite prepared to have a full blown argument about the importance of books in fostering a culture of reading and when I attempted to list the possible/obvious downfalls of bringing Kindle's instead of books to a rural library, I started receiving responses such as "Well, if there is no electricity, why aren't you getting electricity to these places instead? Building roads? Minimizing corruption?" Essentially, instead of using my current "expertise" and intense interest in the importance and effectiveness of community libraries, I should just try to save the world entirely? Now, how effective is that?  A bit flustered at the full on attack of what little I am trying to contribute using what experience I have, I couldn't help but mull on his comments regarding the effectiveness of populating a library with books.
 
If you wanted to read something, would you open up your computer and browse through PDFs on your hard drive or would you rather browse through pages you could actually flip through with your hands?  I know that I would much rather engage with what I am reading.  Even more useful in this argument, what if you were a child, just learning how to read, would you rather pick up a colorful book with a vibrant cover, or browse through files on a Kindle that appears to be much like a toy since you haven't really learned how to read yet.  I think of the primary school students I met in the Mapaki Community Library in Sierra Leone, flipping through pages, pointing to pictures and words and showing, their friends what they saw on the page, tossing one book in a pile only to dive into another.  Can that be done on an electronic screen? Perhaps, but is that really the way to engage a child to become curious about wanting to understand the words in a children's book?  I think not.
  
Comments??  

FAVL accounting volunteer Maureen Berry, In Ouagadougou, sent me the following message:

Hi - word is spreading like wildfire about the FAVL contest! I just got this email today from someone I've never met congratulating me on the grant idea...since I can take no credit for it I wanted to pass it on to you :))
Fingers crossed,
Maureen

> From: Sana Pierre X <xxx@yahoo.fr>
> Subject: CONGRATULATIONS
> To: xxx@yahoo.com
> Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 6:46 PM
> Hi, just to congratulate you for your idea the NGO operating in Burkina Faso in the domain of promoting reading and literacy.   In a friend group we are working in vote to help this ONG, God willing, to see the day in our country the Burkina Faso.  I want also to thank Lynn XX of ALC for spreading this good news about this vote. God bless, and good luck!

Friends of African Village Libraries is a finalist for the Better World Books run-off. Ten literacy projects are competing for $20,000... our submission was to help fund two village libraries in Burkina Faso. Basically, winning the prize depends on the number votes we get. Here is the link, we are much obliged for you taking about 10 seconds to "click on this link" for us!

FAVL collaborater Sarah Switzer writes:

"Looks like rain"... with that comes mixed feelings.  We definitely need it here in Tanzania these days.  Water shortages have an impact on SO many sectors and lives here, even my own.  Here in Tanga there have been power and water cuts DAILY for months now.  Tanga relies on hydro electricity and so if there is a water shortage they have to balance the cuts of water and power so that we are not always without both.  On the other hand, when drought occurs in Tanzania we also have to consider how it is impacting local farming.  When crops fail, Tanzania is forced to import more than usual, making food prices very high, especially in areas that are far from ports that are doing the import.

But I DID say that RAIN comes with mixed feelings.  Lately the rain storms that we have been getting come with plenty of lightening and thunder.  The storms, even though they are giving us more rain for power, leave us without power because of the electric storms.  Funny eh?  Sigh.

I only chose to share a bit of this with you because as I am sitting in the internet cafe I have a view of the menacing clouds overhead... black, thick, and so low down to us it seems that if they were to come down much closer they would crush us (they just look so heavy when they're so black and thick).

As for LIBRARY updates, Chamazi is fairing well.  I am hoping to see the librarian there enroll in the library courses at the Tanzania Library Services Board very soon.  They are taking applications right now, so if we miss this "semester" the next one will be probably in no less than six months from now.  We are working on building the shelves here in Tanga town as wood is very pricy in Dar es Salaam.  THEN we just need more books to fill all the lovely shelves.

Kwekitui is doing great! I went there on boxing day with some family friends who were visiting from Egypt, but are actually from my home town, Comox, BC.  School was on vacation and so it was very quiet, which was kind of magical   The garden that Rogers planted last summer is doing SO well with all this vicious rain the past month.  They are up in the mountains so it tends to rain on them much more than down here on the coast.

As for the proposed library in Nkuu Ndoo, we are waiting to round up a group of volunteers (we are considering and waiting on a few options) so that we can set a date to begin construction.  It is also tough to decide on an engineer for the construction... We hope that the engineer will be very good at what he/she does, but can consider that it is a community project when quoting us his/her price.  Hopefully the engineer will also be really eager to work with unskilled volunteers (it requires a bit of patience and organization).

On another note, I have been contacted by another community library that is thriving way inland, near Kigoma!  It is VERY exciting.  I can't wait to get to know just how many more of these community libraries exist in Tanzania!  Hopefully soon we will be able to establish the Tanzania Community Library Association... We just need to find a few more libraries

That is all for now.  More later....

Au de la coordination régionale de FAVL de HOUNDE,j'ai l'honneur de vous présenter les meilleurs voeux de l'année 2010;qu'elle soit une année de santé ,de longevité ,reussite et plein succès dans nos projets.
           
                      KOURA DONKOUI

Friends of African Village Libraries (www.favl.org) is a finalist for the Better World Books run-off. Ten literacy projects are competing for $20,000... our submission was to help fund two village libraries in Burkina Faso. Basically, winning the prize depends on the number votes we get. Here is the link, we are much obliged for you taking about 10 seconds to "click on this link" for us!

Here's Meredith, one of the students in the Reading West Africa, writing in her now-finished Blogadougou, which I just found and very much enjoyed...

My last days in Bereba were not all puking and death, I also celebrated my 21st birthday and I must say it was a very eventful day. I spent the night before in Lizzie and Louise's village half an hour down the road where we spent most of our time at the one bar with electricity. We had just finished our beers and I was the perfect amount of tipsy for the day before my 21st birthday. Then the police chief decided to buy us another round of beers. I should mention that a beer in Burkina Faso is always 30oz, none of those little pansy beers we drink in the US. Basically I hated myself the next day riding the rickety little bus down the dirt road back to Bereba. But my deadly hangover was appeased a few miles down the road, when we saw an elephant in the forest between the two villages! Wild elephants! It was the best birthday present ever. The rest of my birthday was eventful but I'm too tired to write details. Here are the facts. Market day, birthday crown, little man dancing on his hands, burkinabé circus, yummy spicy chicken dinner, kangaroo rat. Imagine what you may.

Thanks to Kathie Sheldon for forwarding the link to this talk by Chimamanda Adichie:

I stumbled across this title, and I can't wait to read this book- it sounds great.

Here is a video of Wolff introducing the book.

Daniel Wolff explores how twelve influential Americans from a range of backgrounds were educated both inside and outside of the classroom. From Benjamin Franklin and W.E.B. Du Bois to Henry Ford and Elvis Presley, Mr. Wolff present his thoughts on the different ways that people learn and the elusive definition of a "good education." This event was hosted by R.J. Julia Booksellers in Maidson, Connecticut.

But libraries=blue smurfs?  That is low.  From Shanta Devarajan's blog (which is excellent for African economic development issues from the World Bank perspective, i.e. lots of sunny boosterism...;-) comes this amusing (for me) screenshot.

He is definitely 'the bomb' in African literature.... his latest short story is perfect... a Catholic Priest goes on a Dante-ish "guided tour" of Lagos, deeper and deeper in the shit (bad language is used, and if a Jesuit priest can use words like shit, then so the heck can I, even though it still feels bad).  The whole story I am wondering where this is going, and then the classic short story twist at the end was absolutely brilliantly understated but perfect for an economist who studies Africa- I won't give it away (hint: Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon), but after spending several hours preparing my class on African Economic Development (which starts tomorrow) I found myself wondering why I don't just assign the story!

Anyway, for your amusement, Akpan mentions a song by Awilo Longomba, from Congo called Coupe Dibamba.  Not my preferred style in African music (though I like Kassav'), but definitely you can hear this blaring out of the boits de nuit de Ouagadougou!

FAVL is a finalist for the BetterWorldBooks run-off.  Ten literacy projects are competing for $20,000... our submission was to help fund two village libraries in Burkina Faso, in Pobe-Mengao and in Bougounam. 

Click here for the link to vote. 

It will take 20 seconds, honest.  Voting will end on January 20, so don't procrastinate and forward this link and humble request to friends and family.

I'm reading more and more graphic novels... funny, after only reading Maus by Art Spiegelman in the 1980s... and then basically nothing since then, I am now feeling like I might spend 2010 just reading graphic novels... especially those from Africa.  But the African ones I have to order from the library, so in the meantime I read Leslie's copy of Exit Wounds, by Rutu Modan (translation by Noah Stollman), published by Drawn & Quarterly, 2008.  Just great.  A complex story, interesting insight into Israeli society... like watching an episode of a well-done TV drama, which is of course the whole point.  Actually, I am not sure why, I think it would have been boring as a TV drama, so there is something about the form that makes it much more compelling... an appreciation of the illustrator's craft that we can never really get on television?  Now that I think about it I realize that my brain was processing many more sensations (the beach, the hot Israeli wind, the tallness of the girl) than I would have processed if I had been watching.