“They love to look at books. Watching them listen to a read aloud is like watching American children at a movie; they lean forward, enthralled, and talk excitedly to each other about the pictures.”
“They love to look at books. Watching them listen to a read aloud is like watching American children at a movie; they lean forward, enthralled, and talk excitedly to each other about the pictures.”
A Peace Corps Volunteer helps build a library for her community in Cambodia
Peace Corps Volunteer Matt Cusimano and villagers in Guyana work together to build a library with donated books and computers.
As a librarian, I was particularly tickled to hear about Peace Corps Volunteer Karri Stout’s endeavor to establish a library at a school in a small African village in Tanzania. Education and access to information are important developmental tools everywhere in the world.
Of course, this young lady wasn’t just thinking of a standard library, but a bilingual library that would serve students as well as adults living in the village of Utelewe. For the 2013 school year, the school has 342 students enrolled; a library serving this many children will improve literacy rates, and can have a far-reaching impact on their lives.
(Source: decodedscience.com)
Happy National Library Week! Here are some highlights from our Digital Library featuring library projects from Volunteers around the world. You can also help fund current projects through the Peace Corps Partnership program.
In 2008, 796 million adults worldwide (15 years and older) reported not being able to read and write and two-thirds of them (64%) were women (see Table 1). The global adult literacy rate was 83%, with a male literacy rate of 88% and a female literacy rate of 79%. More than half of those unable to read and write – 412 million – lived in Southern Asia. A further 176 million adults were in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, these two regions accounted for three-quarters (74%) of adults unable to read and write worldwide.
Learn more on UNESCO’s Literacy Factsheet.
h/t tumbledbookshelf!
(via thelifeguardlibrarian)