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Bags and books, ready to go! |
We hope this will be the start of something big... Our Little Hands, Big Steps programme, which puts books into the homes of some of our community library families, launched on June 7th at the Mathare North MYSA library. Four Mums and one Dad, with children ranging in age from three months to four years, received their first sets of books for family reading. The special book bags for the programme were created with some messy help from youngsters at our Sipili library, who hope that Little Hands, Big Steps will come to their centre soon. By the end of the decorating session, a lot of the children had decorated themselves with fabric paint! |
At the launch, the children sat in their parents' laps and enjoyed being read to -- one fussy young one immediately stopped crying when the books came out.
We explained how the book sets will rotate among the families -- they'll each get a different bag of books to keep at home for one week, and then exchange it for a different set each week for 10 weeks. The book bags each has a little logbook inside, which adult family members should complete each week, reporting how often they used the books, which family members were involved, which books the children liked or didn't like.
Mathare North librarian Stephen also told the participants how each family will receive a certificate at the end of the 10 weeks, and each child will receive a few books to keep at home permanently after the programme ends.
If the program is successful with this pilot group, we will introduce LHBS to other centres. There's a lot of talk in Kenya these days about the need to create a reading culture -- Little Hands, Big Steps hopes to jump-start the process among the under-5 set and in some of Kenya's poorest communities. Many thanks to American Friends of Kenya and Norwich Rotary Club in the USA for their donation of funds to purchase some of the books for this.
