Category: Ghana

Summary of librarians’ reports for April 2018

From Paul Ayutoliya:

This is a brief summary of Cesrud/Favl Librarians reports for the month of April 2018.
Patronage of the three Cesrud/Favl Ghana libraries have been quite good and encouraging during April. The library’s users who comprised of basic pupils, students of second cycle institution and tertiary students patronized the respective libraries very well in preparations of their examinations they wrote before breaking for vacations.

The major activities that took place across all the three libraries were; individual reading and / or learning story books, notes taking from school, text books and pamphlets, group reading of story books in the libraries with their respective librarians and coordinator some times, fun activities such as playing different kinds of games, games of words spellings, quiz competitions, general cleanup of the library’s and it’s premises. All these activities and others motivated the library users mostly of the basic pupils to keep coming to the library at all time (both daily and night sessions).

The respective libraries librarians over the month also read a number of novels and other story books; the Sumbrungu librarian read a book titled the Unwilling Umpire by Ron Roy, Flying by Lesley Sims and others. The Sherigu librarians read a novel entitled Sons of the Skroll, about a boy called Allan who won many medals as a result of his jumping skills. Alan’s father was a good counselor who have counsel many people but surprisingly he had divorced the wife, Alan suspected the grandmother might have had her hand in his parents’ divorce. There was a mystery of an old farmhouse left near his grandmother place and a lot of tales about the house…. The Gowrie-Kunkua librarian also read a book titled Plants Bite Back by Richard Platts and others books.

During the month some parents and library committee members visited the respective libraries to see how the libraries were functioning and to also encourage library users to keep patronizing the libraries to read more story books and have fun. The library coordinator also visited the respective libraries for monitoring and supervisions.

The problems from the three libraries include; the non-functioning fans (three fans) at the Sherigu library and the need for fans (at least three fans) at the Gowrie-Kunkua Community Library, then again a request from all the librarians for text books, pamphlets and some religious books.

The table below is a summary of the statistics of patronage for both daily and night sessions for April 2018.

table users april 2018
From the statistics table, it is clear the Sumbrungu Community Library have the highest record of attendance followed by Sherigu library coming second for daily attendance but third for the night sessions and vice versa with the Gowrie-Kunkua Community Library. The upgrade of the Sumbrungu library with all the fans working and a lot of games for fun accounts for the highest record of patronages. I’m hopeful that if the fans issues are address at Sherigu and Gowrie community library, their patronage will also improve.

The librarians express their appreciation for the books I came with from Burkina Faso which have been shared with the respective libraries. They thanked Cesrud/Favl for the continual support to their respective community libraries.

 

Biblionef Ghana provides Sumbrungu Community Library with new material #Ghana

Biblionef Ghana provided last week, to Sumbrungu Community Library, an amazing amount of material: 1250 books, 4 laptops computers, 3 tablets, 1 flat screen led TV, 1 DVD player, 54 plastic chairs for nursery and lower primary pupils, 10 plastic tables, 2 tables for the laptops, 2 kinder boxes, 2 shelves, 1 printer, 3 carpet mats and pillows  for those would like to sit or lie down whiles reading, 4 plastic basket that serve also as shelves, and 5 or so different games.

After a review meeting with the school teachers at the Women’s Meeting Hall on the donations, the teachers were asked to go and have a look at the work that has been done in the Sumbrungu Library. The teachers were impressed with what they saw and assured everyone that they would work closely with CESRUD-FAVL by encouraging  their pupils to visit the library. The Executive director of CESRUD Mr. Rex Asanga thanked Biblionef Ghana’s team and Madam Wia from the Netherlands for the support given to the library  and hoped they will continue to collaborate to give everyone the joy of reading.

Pupils of St.Charles Lwanga were very happy seeing the library with more books and learning materials. At one point we had to stop some pupils from entering the library because the room was getting crowded; they all wanted to catch a glimpse of the inside!

Biblionef donates books, furniture, computers and support to Sumbrungu Community Library in Upper East, Ghana

biblionef books for sumbrungu library smA team (Mrs Patricia Arthur and Anita with Mr. Isaac joining  them the following day) from Biblionef Ghana arrived in Bolgatanga on 8 March 2018. Madam Wia from the Netherlands is expected to join them on the 13th, After taking some rest at the Commi Ci Commi Ca hotel in Bolga town for few hours, they came straight to the Sumbrungu library.  They have sent the library about 1,250 new books, a flat screen led TV, DVD player, 54 plastic chairs for nursery and lower primary kids, 10 plastic small tables, four  laptop computers and three Samsung tablets. Incredible! John Salifu Cesrud education project coordinator was very helpful in coordinating all the material delivery and distribution.

Visit to the Upper East Regional library

Paul Ayutoliya, FAVL CESRUD Ghana coordinator, reports:
IMG_20180208_135848I paid a visit to the Upper East Regional library today. The visit was for me to find out the current state of the regional library in terms of the library  performance and  to also update the regional librarian Mr. Leslie Kasanga on happenings at the Ghana libraries.  Mr. Kasanga welcomed me to the library and was happy for the visit and said attendance to the regional library has lately been very encouraging. The problems still remains Government inability to provide the library with enough  funds for their activities and  fuel to fuel the library van to go to Accra and bring the books that have been allocated to the regional library. He touched on a number of outreach programs he has planned to carry out which will benefit the library users but unable to do so due to lack of funding.  I briefed Mr.  Kasanga on recent happenings in our libraries; patronage has been good, activities so far have been good.  I touched also on CESRUD partnering with Biblionef Ghana in providing books for 20 basic Schools in West B circuit all in Sumbrungu. Mr. Kasanga was happy that CESRUD have been able to help in expanding the community libraries to the basic schools. I hinted we are likely  to invite him to our libraries during this year vacation classes periods to observe what we normally do and perhaps add his input. He said he will be ready to honour such invitation.

Repairs at Sumbrungu Community Library #Ghana

Last October 2017 the electric connections and fans were repaired in the library.  I think I forgot to post some pictures of the repair work, so here they are!

And here are some nice letters of appreciation from library patrons. Thank you donors!

lettters patrons

 

Biblionef Ghana supporting FAVL libraries and school libraries in Bolgatanga area

Paul Ayutoliya, FAVL-CESRUD library coordinator writes:

Rex Asanga, Cesrud Director, was able to get support from an NGO called Biblionef Ghana. Biblionef Ghana was able to support 20 basics (Primary and Junior High) schools in Sumbrungu West B circuit with donation of story books for pupils and small shelves to stock the books. Selected teachers from the 20 schools were taken through a two days training by official of Biblionef who came from Accra on how to manage their school libraries, I took part in that training, Mr. Rex have asked that as I tour those basic schools with the libraries, whatever support or technical assistance they need that I able to support I should do so. I am hopeful this year that there is going to be more collaboration with teachers of the beneficiary school to help the young ones enjoy reading. Let me note that the school libraries only operate during school hours, during the night session many of the patrons from far who have develop interest for reading do join their peers at the Sumbrungu Community Library for reading and/ or learning.

Officials from Biblionef Ghana as part of the training workshop visited some the schools and interacted with pupils and teachers, they also paid a visit to the Sumbrungu Community Library with Mr. Rex. They were very impressed with the materials they saw stock in the library for users. They expressed their appreciations to the FAVL for the laudable initiative and promised to get the library either two desktop computers or laptops and other reading materials when they return this year in March to visit the school libraries and assess how the libraries are functioning.

Ghana libraries supporting reading in Upper East

CESRUD/FAVL Ghana community Libraries resumed work on the 9th of January 2018. All the three libraries were cleaned in order to get premises conducive for reading and learning to kick-start the new year. On January 11th, the three libraries were opened to the public. As expected for these earlier days at school, attendance in all three libraries was low for the first week following the break. However, by the second week, the patronage had increased. Many of the patrons were seen reading different kinds of story books, as well as playing games under the guidance of the librarians. During these first and second weeks at work, I was able to read a number of different story books with patrons.

teenprincessghanaPrime among the story books I enjoy reading and almost shared it all the time with patrons or pupils because the moral it has to patrons or pupils is entitled Teen Princess, written Diana Mcbagonluri. Here is a summary: Dede Nortey was a girl of many dreams. She was also intelligent as well as confident as a result of her hard work. Dede was always seen at the library with her best friend Naa.  At the library they always read and exchanged different kinds of story books, and completed their home work. Dede balanced all these with her household chores. Dede was a little girl who had a very big dream. She wanted to be a Teen Princess and she was prepared to overcome any challenge to achieve this dream. But as Dede was soon to find out, dreams can be very different from reality. The odds were against Dede the moment she entered the contest. At one point the only option left for her was to quit the contest, if she was to avoid embarrassment. But the words of her mother kept ringing in her head. These were the words of Dede’s mother to her long before she entered the contest: “You don’t need to paint your face to be a Teen Princess. What you need is your head.” And so with these words ringing in her head combined with her hard working spirit, she was able to overcome and be crowned the next Teen Princess. This particular story has a lot of challenging lessons to the young ones who want to be good readers and achieve whatever dreams they want to achieve in the future to work hard, no matter the circumstances, hard work pays.

All the schools I have since visited this year, what I do normally is to go with two copies of this particular story books; one will be given to the head teacher or his assistant to go through with me as I read to the students/pupils, whiles I’m reading and students/pupils are doing the listening, the teacher role is to normally put down some questions from the story, after I’m done reading, I will ask questions to assess the impact of the reading. They responses to the questions and contributions so far have been very great at the schools I have visited.  Is an idea the teachers have embraced, news of this fruitful exercise have spread to other basic schools I’m yet to visit, teachers and pupils of these other schools expect to see me soon in their respective schools to talk to their students on the importance of reading and also share with students/pupils stories that will stimulate or trigger them to like reading. And so more tours to the basic schools around the community libraries and perhaps beyond are to be expected in this first quarter. Other books read include: Mumaizu and the Hippos, The Lucky One, Laali Saves the King among others.