Recently in UgCLA Category

The Uganda Community Libraries Association (UgCLA), FAVL's Ugandan affiliate, held its 1st national conference in Masaka last month.

Kate Parry writes :

"The Uganda Community Libraries Association has been growing so rapidly that it has had to restructure the regular meetings that it organizes for its member libraries. Instead of having two workshops a year at the national level, it is now, from 2011, having a single national conference each year and then at least one workshop a year for each regional cluster of libraries.

The first national conference was held from 16th to 19th January in the Social Centre at Masaka, attended by70 participants on the first working day (the 17th) and 67 on the second.

The theme of the conference was "Libraries for Health."  Participants heard talks by two speakers from two potential partners: TASO (The AIDS Support Organization), and Afri-Pads (which helps to keep girls in school by producing affordable sanitary pads). Representatives of three of UgCLA's own member libraries also presented the work that they are doing for health. The participants worked in groups to discuss a draft curriculum for Health Reading Camps that are planned for the August; and everyone got to see a collection of health books appropriate for use in the camps.

Some time was spent on administrative business. Participants heard about a number of awards that they could apply for and were invited by UgCLA's partner the Maendeleo Foundation, to apply for the Foundation to bring its mobile computer lab to their library. They also met in regional groups in order to make initial plans for the regional workshops that are planned for later in the year, and they voted for a new Board of Directors: three of the previous Directors, Kate Parry, Gertrude Kayaga Mulindwa, and Christine Ssempebwa, remained on the Board, while Daniel Ahimbisibwe, Esther Kyazike, Willy Ngaka, and Augustine Napagi--all of whom work with particular libraries--were voted onto it as new members.

A final point to note: the conference was an occasion for still more libraries to join UgCLA, bringing the total membership to 79."

UgCLA (the Uganda Community Libraries Association) held its sixth workshop from July 11-13 this year (see the pictures below). The workshop was funded largely by Pockets of Change, as part of its support for our Children's Book Project, and  Hawk Children's Fund provided some additional funds to allow our new members to attend and to support a book-making project for a couple of the sessions. The workshop was held, once again, at the Kabubbu Community Library, which is affiliated to a conference centre and resort where we could all be put up.

Every workshop that UgCLA runs seems to be bigger and better than the last. In this case, we had 55 people attending, representing a large majority of our 67 member libraries. The activities were all focused on how we can better help children in our libraries. First, those libraries that had received books under the Children's Book Project reported on what they had done with them, and everybody present had a chance to ask questions and make comments. A packet of 80-odd books has been given to each of ten libraries, and while they all used them in different ways, the impact seems to have been great everywhere, bringing in increasing numbers of children and encouraging adults to read as well. Then we spent an afternoon working on photographs of everyday Ugandan people, things, and activities: participants designated the themes in the new thematic curriculum for lower primary classes that the photographs could be used for and wrote text for each picture appropriate to the designated themes. Our plan is to collate this work to form  a set of picture books that could be used not only in primary schools but in nursery schools and for family literacy projects - for we have found that one of the major deficits in locally produced material is picture books for young children. Next day, the librarians at Kabubbu showed the participants how they could make supplementary material from the books they had in their libraries, material that would be fun for children to work with and that would make the books more accessible - and one of them had a group of eleven volunteers act out a story with an accompanying little song that she had made up. Lastly, we had a session devoted to "fun and games", which, this being Africa, evolved into everyone dancing to the beat of drums played by children from the Kabubbu primary school.

In short, a good time was had by all, but it's important to emphasize that this is not the sole purpose of our workshops. We have found that through them our library managers pick up ideas from their colleagues as well as from us, and that all the libraries are run, in consequence, a little better. The participants get to know one another and have by now built up a strong sense of solidarity, which is expressed in practical offers of help to one another. On this occasion, for example, the library at the Suubi Centre in Masaka District made arrangements for its new librarian to spend some time at Kitengesa and Kabubbu to get some training. Then, of course, the actual workshop sessions will result, we hope, in libraries exploring new activities and developing new materials. We have yet to see what will come up as a result of this last workshop, but we are confident that many libraries will now be using pictures more and many librarians will be making word cards and exercises to go with the children's books that they have.