Since the foundation of Kids in Kenya, fund-raising efforts have been devoted to provision of urgently needed school materials such as pencils and papers, while such items as footballs and rubber thongs have been provided for reasons of health - the former to promote good exercise, the latter to protect children’s feet around unsanitary toilets that are no more than holes in the ground. Such items will continue to be needed but we would also like to think more ambitiously about larger projects for the future.
One such project concerns the provision of a library to serve the whole community in Siaya Province in which six schools and approximately 5,000 children we support are to be found. The schools currently use textbooks published by the Government (if they are provided), but there is a need to augment and extend the available reading resources by purchasing a wide range of reading materials of the kind we take for granted in our school libraries, and that will take young readers far beyond what the textbooks offer, regardless of their value. These include for example, resource materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, history and geography books, and books devoted to current affairs as well as stories, books of poetry and other literary works of a kind to stimulate the imagination and enrich the lives of young readers. These are all a necessary part of the educational enrichment we could ideally like to give the children in their isolated community.
Rather than try to provide libraries for all schools, we believe it would be better and more cost effective to create one library in the area servicing not only the schools but the wider community. Potentially, a library that served the whole community would become something of a rallying point around which teachers, children and villagers would come to value the opportunities that a wider reading can afford them.
The project would involve raising funds to construct the necessary building at a central point convenient to all. There is no power in the area therefore computers, videos, DVD’s cannot be made available.
Our initial goals for a central library
Land
Building - mud brick- initially 2 rooms - one for books on shelves and reading tables; one for librarians to work and catalogue books.
