UgCLA (the Uganda Community Libraries Association) will be three years old next month, so I'm writing to report on how this toddler is doing.
First, let me clarify UgCLA's relationship to FAVL. I myself am the chief link, being on the Board of both, and FAVL helps UgCLA significantly by acting as a channel for donations from the USA. UgCLA, for its part, promotes FAVL's aims in Uganda. It operates quite differently from FAVL, though, since it does not itself establish libraries. Rather, it seeks out existing ones, helps them to develop, and encourages the foundation of more. It does these things in five main ways:
· A lot of travelling! I myself am trying to visit each one of UgCLA's member libraries so as to encourage them and give them advice. So far I've covered about three quarters of them.
· Workshops. Since its foundation, UgCLA has organized two national workshops a year, to which every member library is invited to send a representative. These workshops are invaluable, not only because they provide training in running libraries but also because librarians can meet and share ideas. By now they've developed a strong sense of community and clear leaders have emerged among them. The only trouble is that the libraries are now too many (see below)--so from next year we will be organizing a single national conference instead in combination with regional workshops.
· Distributions. We try to make partnerships each year that will enable us to distribute goodies among our member libraries, usually on a competitive basis, and to provide training for the competition through our workshops. The first such distribution, funded by the US Embassy in Kampala, was of six grants of $1000 each; the second was of four scholarships to attend the 6th Pan African Conference on Reading for All in Dar es Salaam (to which we added a small conference on community libraries in Lushoto); the third, this year, was of ten packets of locally purchased children's books. Next year we are working towards a "Libraries for Health" project in which we hope to distribute books about health (especially HIV-AIDS) together with funds for organizing reading camps or workshops on the subject.
· Links to funders for individual libraries. We are building up relationships with small-scale funders and advising them on which libraries they could work with for particular projects. A recent example is the work we've been doing with Hawk Children's Fund, of the University of Maryland's Eastern Shore Campus (see http://hawkchildrensfund.org/). HCF wanted to support a rural solar electricity project, so we identified two libraries that could make good use of solar electricity, and then administered the grant that the fund gave us. Now children at the URLCODA library in Arua District and the Mpolyabigere library in Namutumba District can read at night (see the posts on each of these two libraries).
· Volunteers. UgCLA also hosts volunteers: that is, we identify appropriate placements for them, depending on their interests, and arrange with the host library for their accommodation. We have had four volunteers so far and are receiving two more this month.
UgCLA is definitely fulfilling a need, for its growth over three years has been extraordinary. When it was launched, in August 2007, it was joined by 14 libraries. The number rose slowly at first, to 16 by July 2008. But a year later it had reached 41, and now, in June 2010, UgCLA has 64 member libraries. All are local initiatives and most have no foreign support; and it has to be said that some are notional, having no buildings and few books. But there is the seed of a library in every place: a primary school, an adult literacy class, or a local organization devoted to literacy and development. The idea of a library resonates with Ugandans' enthusiasm for education and their disenchantment with what the schools are offering. It is the kind of modest institution that local people feel they can support--though of course they always appreciate outside help--and if well led it can become a real centre for community development. UgCLA is dedicated to helping them to get the help that they need in order to flourish, but also, and more importantly, to helping them to help themselves.
For more, see UgCLA's own website: www.ugcla.org.
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