FAVL Blog

Sarah Tkach, who participated in the RWA program in 2010 gave a presentation about her experience in Burkina at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. 

French II students "visited" Burkina Faso via Sarah Tkach's presentation on the West African country. Ms. Tkach shared her experience studying abroad and interning in a village library in Burkina Faso through a program run by Santa Clara University in conjunction with her professors' non-profit, Friends of African Village Libraries. The students enjoyed the chance to experience this Francophone country with all their senses: tasting peanuts and dried mangoes, listening to the music of balafons and drums, watching video clips of dances and city streets, touching beautiful printed pagnes (fabric skirts), and seeing pictures of life in the capital city, Ouagadougou, and in villages. The students gained a new understanding of the Francophone world, and a few adventurous girls were ready to grab their passports and fly over to see Burkina Faso for themselves!

Read more about the presentation on Castilleja's website.

Last week, Cletus received two Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionaries from the Director of the Bolgatanga Regional Library. In the past, they have supported our libraries with book donations. Cletus writes that the coordinator said that the library will continue to support our libraries with whatever books they have.

A big thanks to the US Embassy, which hosted a reception to celebrate Michael, Alain Sissao and Felix Compaoré's research here in Burkina, "Promotion de la Lecture" and the new reading program "Les Jeunes du Tuy Lisent." And another big thanks to all of our partners here in Ouaga who attended.


An article about the event was featured on lefaso.net today.

Partis du postulat que les élèves ne s'intéressent plus trop à la lecture, les auteurs de l'ouvrage, Félix Compaoré, Michael Kevane et Alain Joseph Sissao, ont voulu en connaitre les raisons ainsi que la contribution des bibliothèques dans la promotion de la lecture en milieu scolaire.

Souvent attribué aux « habitudes de vie des populations », le manque d'envie de lire des ouvrages s'explique, selon les chercheurs, par l'inaccessibilité des ouvrages. « L'enquête a révélé que le problème de base est que les élèves n'ont pas accès aux documents », a indiqué Michael Kevane.

[...] Afin de résoudre cela, les chercheurs ont proposé que soient créées et équipées des bibliothèques et que l'accent soit mis sur les romans burkinabè. « Car il en manque dans nos bibliothèques ». Ils ont également lancé, en partenariat avec l'Université américaine de Santa Clara, un projet dans la province du Tuy dénommé « Les jeunes de Tuy lisent » afin de stimuler la lecture chez les jeunes. 300 jeunes prennent part à ce projet et près de 14 bibliothèques sont équipées à cet effet.

You can read the full article here.

Enjoy some photos from recent activities at some of our libraries.

Drawing fun in Sara


Scrabble game in Boni

Individual Reading Time 

Great article and photos from Larry Price.  These kids really should be reading books, but the chances are 50/8000 that their village or small town has a library. 

On the rocky ground outside the Kollo mining village near the border between Burkina Faso and Ghana, about 100 people are working, 30 or so of them children. They smash boulders into pebbles and pebbles into grit with primitive hammers and sticks. They haul buckets of well water up the hillside and, pouring this water into shallow pans filled with rock and dirt, they swirl the muddy mix, looking in the silt for tiny flecks of gold. Nearby, a small hill rises from this barren gold field, and atop this hill are hand-dug shafts that plunge 150 feet into the ground. Joseph, 15, and Germain, 12, lead the way down into the mine, gripping knotted ropes, finding footholds and squeezing past support timbers in the yard-wide pits. They get to the bottom after 20 minutes and silently begin to fill buckets of ore to be hauled up by rope. The shaft ends in a cramped, pitch-dark pit. The bottom widens a bit to reveal a tiny, wedge-shaped crevice. In the darkness, sitting cross-legged with a flashlight strapped to his head, is a small boy. He chinks at the rock walls with a handmade pickax and scoops the shards into a large green bucket. His hands never stop moving - scooping and chipping, chipping and scooping. The older boys call him Théophile. They say he is 7 years old.

In the past few days, we've received two donations of books for the libraries. One was given by an ISO parent, who donated about 10 books, all equipped with CDs. We'll keep the CDs at the multi-media center in Houndé for training purposes for librarians.

Thanks to an ad that we put on an Ouaga listserv, we got into contact with Claire Depoutot, who brought us about 60 children's books in French. The books are very well adapted to our libraries - they are about animals like hippos and elephants and multi-cultural topics like world religions. We're going to send the books to Dimikuy, which has the smallest inventory of books.
 
Thanks so much to both of these donors! The books will be much appreciated by the children of Dimikuy!

Le vendredi, je me suis rendu à Loumbila avec Diane Sharp, volontaire du Corps de la Paix, pour une rencontre de concertation sur le projet de bibliothèque. Cette rencontre avait pour but d'échanger sur le recrutement du bibliothécaire, sa formation et surtout son salaire. Etaient présents M. Joseph Ouedraogo, agent à la mairie et homologue du volontaire, M. Ram Joseph Kafando, Secrétaire-Général de la mairie représentant Madame le Maire. Après avoir présenté FAVL, son fonctionnement, la question de recruter un bibliothécaire a été soulevée. M. Kafando nous a expliqué le processus de recrutement des agents de la mairie qui ne relève pas de leurs compétences. Cependant ils sont d'accord avec le principe et trouveront un bibliothécaire dans les jours à venir en attendant de prendre les dispositions adéquates.

Les livres produits par FAVL leur ont été présentés pour leur inciter d'avantage à adhérer au projet. Il faut noter que la volontaire Diane Sharp a déjà collecté 4 cartons de livres et acheté 2 cartons de livres d'auteurs africains et pour enfants. La mairie a également donné une grande salle dans l'enceinte de l'ancienne Mairie qui va bientôt rejoindre un nouveau bâtiment en juin 2013.

Après avoir salué Madame le Maire, nous lui avons présenté les livres produits par FAVL pour enfants. Elle les a bien appréciés et souhaite en recevoir dans sa bibliothèque. FAVL espère recevoir très prochainement le nouveau bibliothécaire pour sa formation dans son réseau de l'Ouest.

Cletus came to Ouaga last week to work with me on organizing the After School Reading Program, which is being funded by a grant that FAVL-Ghana received from the Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation in 2011 for reading camps, book purchase and distribution and after-school tutoring program. Reading camps took place in 2011 and book purchase and distribution took place in 2012. With all the recent personnel changes, it has not been possible to hold the after-school program until now. But with a motivated team in place, we're ready to get it going!

The program will begin in June, and 15 kids will be invited to each of the 3 community libraries after school over a period of one month. The students will be split into 2 groups based on their reading levels, with each group coming to the library two days a week to work on their reading skills. Each month, a new group of 15 kids will be invited to participate in the program. The after-school reading program will take place over 10 months, which means that a total of 450 kids will get the chance to improve their reading skills.

The program will be run by one counselor and one librarian at each library. The counselors are all local teachers, and two of them participated in the 2011 reading camps. They will participate in a monthly meeting to share best practices, reading strategies and challenges. Cletus and I worked through two guides that were created by FAVL for the reading camps and adapted them for the after-school program, and the counselors and librarians will use them to plan their daily activities. The guides focused on reading strategies like creating character webs, diagramming a story and learning and remembering new vocabulary. I will be traveling to Ghana at the end of the month to work with Cletus and the librarians and counselors who will be running the program. Then the program will finally get started!

From Michael Trucano.  Our "Youth of Tuy Read" program is using books, not e-readers.  None of the books we are distributing are available on e-readers anyway, and breakage and power and just plain "not that appealing as a book cover" I think are important.

Whatever path it chooses, Worldreader says that, at the grassroots level, there are a few things that need to happen if its work is to have any sort of real impact. They include: 1. Support from local education officials -- or there won't be the space to introduce new approaches and innovations 2. Support from teachers -- or the tools simply won't be used (effectively) 3. A need to give reading a higher social currency in many local cultures, especially those that have very strong oral traditions -- often, where there are few books, this leads to not a lot of reading, which leads to reading not being highly valued (a vicious cycle) 4. Dedicated 'face time' in schools -- important to keep momentum going 5. Buy in from local support structures at the community level -- without which, an initiative from outside the community may remain 'foreign', and thus less likely to be embraced The first stage of Worldreader activities in introducing e-books and e-readers into a few small communities in Africa has convinced the organization and its backers that what it is doing is worth doing. We no longer need to convince ourselves "if" we should be doing this, they say. Now the question is, "how?"

From EIFL:

On the last Thursday of every month, Northern Regional Library in Tamale, Ghana, hosts lectures on information and communication technology for development (ICT4D). As a result, the public library is becoming well known as a centre for stimulating local development. The library's two main partners in delivering the lectures - Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS) and the local ICT4D agency, Savana Signatures - were extremely happy to locate the lectures in the library. 'It made a lot of sense to us to have the only knowledge sharing event in the whole of the region positioned at the library, where people go to seek knowledge. This is why we moved the monthly ICT4D Forum from its previous location at the Institute for Local Government Studies in Tamale, to its present location at the Regional Library,' said Mr Ibrahim Maida Inusah,

Looking for a weekend getaway? You don't have to look any farther than Gowrie's community library, according to Cletus. This is what he writes:

On Saturday, after a heavy downpour, I went to Gowrie-Kunkua for monitoring. When I got there about 11 am, the librarian was busy playing games, like Ludo and puzzles, with a group of kids. The entire library was occupied by kids. They were pupils of classes 5, 6 and 7 between the ages of 6-13 years. About 30 children were present at the time of my arrival. In fact, it was so great seeing the children enjoying the cool weather in the library.

April was a month filled with activities for the libraries in Tuy! In their monthly reports, several of the librarians wrote about fun activities that they organized to improve kids' reading and life skills. They showed once again that village libraries are important centers for personal and intellectual growth in their communities. Here are some of the activities that went on:

• Sara: Etude des Annales

Le 11 avril, j'ai choisi l'étude dans les annales pour motivés les élèves a exploité ces livres parce que ceux-ci est très important pour les élèves du CM et surtout pour avoir le C.E.P. J'ai fait cette séance avec 17 élèves du CM1, et j'ai choisi une dictée suivie des questions de vocabulaire, grammaire, conjugaison et intelligence du texte. Après nous avons vu la page de la correction, et ensemble nous avons corrigé les copies. Après cette séance j'ai reçu 8 abonnés parmi ces élèves le lendemain.

• Dimikuy: Séance de Mots Croisées (Crossword Puzzles)

Le 04 avril, nous avons eu la séance des exercices de mots croisés avec 5 élèves de la classe de CE2. Mon objectif était de permettre aux enfants de savoir ce que c'est que les mots croisés. Après avoir expliqué aux enfants le jeu, nous avons fait ensemble 2 exercices pour leur montré l'exemple. Ensuite chacun a fait un essai tout seul sur une feuille. A la fin pour bien les encourager, chacun a reçu de stickers comme récompense.

• Dohoun: Nettoyage

Le 18 avril, cette séance sur le nettoyage a eu lieu à la bibliothèque avec 22 élèves. L'objectif de l'activité était de sensibiliser les enfants sur la propriété du cadre de vie de l'homme. Suite à ces explications, les enfants ont cités les lieux qui peuvent être nettoyés chaque fois (le dispensaire, les écoles) et plusieurs lieux publics. Un cadre de vie propre permet à l'homme qui travaille de faire du bon travail et être en bonne santé.

• Koumbia: Atelier de sons

Le jeudi 11 avril, l'activité menée à la bibliothèque de Koumbia était l'atelier de sons. Le nombre d'élèves du primaire qui ont participé à cette séance était 17. Quelques volontaires ont été au tableau pour lire plusieurs sons qui se trouve dans les mots communs. L'objectif était de montre la lecture des sons dans les différents mots tels que: carnet, poulet, les, des, mètre. Au cours de l'activité, les élèves ont beaucoup participé et ont promis de revenir prochainement pour une autre activité.

Aaron Kuwornu of the Ghana Library Authority was visiting the libraries in Upper East, and he took this snapshot in Sumbrungu.  I like it: simple and direct, this is how a child learns to read.

Dans le cadre de la promotion de la lecture et de la valorisation des talents locaux, FAVL est en train d'initier la production des livres. Ces livres seront de diverses natures : les biographies des personnes du villages, des livres d'histoire locale, des bandes dessinées et des livres d'histoire ou d'évènements vécus. C'est dans cette dynamique que le livre de Koura Bemave a été produit pour présenter au public.

La présentation de ce livre a eu lieu à Béréba" en présence de l'intéressé. Les gens présents n'ont pas manqué de lui poser des questions pour comprendre la vie dans l'armée coloniale. Le livre est très simple et beaucoup apprécié par le public. Les gens voudront bien payer une copie pour garder en souvenir mais l'objectif de FAVL est doté nos bibliothèques avec les publications locales. Nous invitons donc les lecteurs, les bibliothécaires à développer cette initiative.

FAVL en collaboration avec les chercheurs de l'INSS (Institut des Sciences des Sociétés Ouaga) et M. Michael Kevane Professeur à l'Université de Santa Clara aux Etats-Unis organisent un programme de recherche intitulé "les Jeunes du Tuy Lisent" (JTL) de Mai 2013 à Aout 2013.

Ce programme a pour but de mesurer l'impact de la lecture sur le comportement des jeunes. Chaque jeune participant recevra un livre par semaine pour lire. Un atelier de formation a été organisé à l'intention des animateurs et bibliothécaires pour les outils à la collecte des données sur le terrain. Au total 15 participants ont pris part à cet atelier de formation qui a eu lieu le 30 avril 2013 à la bibliothèque de Béréba.

Les participants ont saisi l'occasion pour donner les impressions des uns et des autres sur le programme. D'une manière générale les gens apprécient l'initiative qui permettra aux jeunes de se cultiver et d'occuper leur temps pendant les vacances. Les enseignants quant à eux estiment que c'est très intéressant d'aller vers les gens à domicile pour les pousser à lire.

Cependant des difficultés ont été soulignées à savoir la période choisie (saison des pluies), l'accessibilité des zones, l'impact de l'orpaillage. Par conséquent ils estiment qu'il serait intéressant que le programme se poursuive au cours de l'année scolaire. En attendant cette première phase du programme vient de prendre son envol.

The teachers, librarians, students and parents at the International School of Ouagadougou (ISO) dedicated funds receiving from their 2013 Read-a-thon to purchasing books for the village libraries in Burkina Faso.  More than 1.3 million CFA was raised (almost $3000!).  Every library is going to get a nice new selection of books from this.  Thanks so much! 

Krystle and I had a table at the ISO fair to show off some of the RWA and other books that readers in the libraries really like, and to thank the ISO community.

Cletus and Krystle at their computer...

















Donkoui at his computer...

Gee Willikers, Paul Krugman, welcome to your own goshdarn neighborhood lie-berry.  Set yerself down and read a book why dontcha....

Nothing professional or deep here, just an interesting (to me) discovery I've made. For complicated reasons, mainly family-duty-related, I've lately had to do a lot of hopscotching around central New Jersey, with various appointments and tasks here and there but often with gaps of several hours in between. And, as always, lots of work to get done in the cracks. What to do? Well, there are coffee shops -- and the proliferation of vaguely cute coffee shops is actually one of the ways America has improved from the percolator-and-corn-muffin hell I grew up in. But you can only drink so much coffee, and anyway I find myself wanting a bit more peace. And the answer is, libraries! Many of the towns near here have very nice libraries, some big and fancy, some modest, but all with quiet corners where you can sit and either access their wifi (if they have it) or use your phone as a hotspot. Oh, and I even end up looking at a few books -- you know, those things made out of dead trees. It's a small thing, but it's amazing how much it has improved the past few weeks.

HT: Bill Sundstrom

Michael happened upon a Beyond Access blog post the other day, announcing the 12 new Beyond Access members for 2013 and guess what! Your very own Friends of African Village Libraries was on the list. We submitted an application at the end of March for a team comprised of Donkoui, Yves Dakouo (who works as part of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and is Director of Publishing and Literacy Promotion in Burkina Faso) and Zombiéssé Doyé (who represents the municipality of Béréba in the Regional Council, formerly served as mayor of Béréba and is incredibly supportive of the libraries in his commune). They will all travel to South Africa in December for a regional conference of members on the African continent. Members are also eligible for a number of grants to support local projects and strengthen relationships with government partners.

Between Next Library, which takes place in June in Danemark, and Beyond Access, we're making quite a world traveler out of Donkoui this year and getting the name out about FAVL on an international level.

Read more about the new Beyond Access members here.

For our Youth of Tuy Reading (Jeunes du Tuy Lisent) JTL program we selected about 20 book titles that will be circulating, one a week, to about 300 youth in the region.  We're interested in the long-term effects of reading fiction on people's economic preferences and attitudes (trust, willingness to cooperate for public benefit, ethnic tolerance, etc.).  Our FAVL library coordinators chose the titles to be interesting and appropriate.  I just read two of the books, Mademoiselle by Aminata Sow Mbaye, from Senegal, and Le devoir de classe by the Burkinabe team of Missa Hebie, Noraogo Sawadogo and Sophie Heidi Kam.  Le devoir de classe is based on a television series produced for Burkinabe television.

Both books emphasize themes that are in alignment with the objectives of the JTL program.  Mademoiselle is about a young teacher in 1960s Senegal, just beginning her career in a remote small town.  The short memoir-style novel is suffused with a sense of nostalgia and appreciation of basic values of hospitality and generosity.  More importantly, the young heroine consistently chooses to "do the right thing" in a series of situations where a person of less integrity might choose self-interest over principle.  Mademoiselle is civically engaged, generous, honest, and goes out of her way to help strangers.  She cares about the misfortunes of others, and shares with others (without going overboard, she not a saint!).  Reading her story compels the reader to want to be like her; the novel inspires sentiments of empathy for others and desire to be more principled and more altruistic.

Le devoir de classe is about a young boy in upper primary school, Ismael, who is the son of a simple gardener.  His father's employer helps pay for Ismael to be in the elite school.  Ismael is studious and honest.  He is tricked by the egoistical son of a minister, and is expelled from school.  His friends stand by him, and in the end he is vindicated.  The message of the book is that honesty and effort are important virtues, but perhaps more importantly that friends help each other in times of need.  Ismael inspires trust amongst his friends.  That trust is what enables them to outsmart the devious son of the minister.  The lack of trust he has in others, on the other hand, is his downfall.