Schofield is old enough for Little Hands, Big Steps
The staff of each KidsLibs Centre is in charge of creating programs and projects that fit the needs and interests of their community. Beyond that, KidsLibs works to build projects that we hope can eventually be expanded to all of the centres. These are in areas of special interest that we believe are particularly important to our goals.
Our Book Clubs grow out of partnerships between individual centres and nearby private schools. By bringing children from our centres together with children from more richly resourced schools and homes to discuss and engage with common texts, we believe a number of things are achieved: our children gain experience with responding to literature outside the classroom, in ways that are personal and exciting. They gain confidence in their own insights into the texts. And they establish relationships built on equality and a common interest with children from very different backgrounds, to the advantage of both. Right now we have two Book Clubs in operation, BookLab (Mathare North and International School of Kenya), and Kawangware/Braeburn.
Our Girls Clubs address an urgent need for forums where girls can speak freely to a trusted adult about the particular pressures and issues they face, and receive support and information about difficult and private topics such as menstruation, FGM, and HIV/AIDS -- as well as common teen concerns such as boyfriends, appearance, and their hopes for the future. Mathare North started the first club, and Sipili is just getting started with their own group.
Little Hands, Big Steps is our newest, and in some ways our most exciting, project. Family reading -- ie, story time, bedtime stories, any experience at all with books for children too young to read themselves -- is not common in Kenya, particularly in homes where the cost of books and lack of electric power gets in the way of this wonderful experience. Little Hands addresses that through a program of shared, rotating book bags that allow families to enjoy reading together for the first time.
