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Mathare North birthday celebration includes street theatre |
March 2009: Mathare North marks its FIFTH birthday in March. Kawangware has moved to new premises and is now operating as a project of Dagoretti Empowerment Centre (DEC). Unfortunately, we've been told that despite earlier assurances, KidsLibs will soon have to vacate the rooms where the Sipili center is now housed. However, we do have a firm agreement from the community on donated land to build a new center nearby. This means we will have to move into high gear to find funding to construct the new center! Girlchild Safe Places: While we were setting up the library in rural Sipili, Anne lived there for three months, and became increasingly aware of the plight of girls. Girls in this area are often married off as young as 12 years of age. Their husbands may be men over the age of 45. Female circumcision (or female genital mutilation, FGM) is still common, even though it is illegal under Kenyan law. Many girls are kept home from school to look after younger brothers and sisters, clean, tend to crops, look after goats or sheep, cook meals, etc... |
Girls also are kept away from school during their monthly periods, as they do not have access to sanitary towels. This interrupts their education. When the library opened a great number of girls started coming in to read the books. They had never had access to books outside of their school curriculum texts (for those lucky enough to go to school). It was a joy to see them talking to each other about what they were reading, asking questions, and feeling free to talk. While KidsLibs does not see its role as challenging community traditions, we do believe in offering everyone access to the information and support they need to make the choices that are right for them. We would like to create a Girls Club at our Sipili library, where girls can come to meet and to talk to each other about ANYTHING: marriage, boys, sex, clothes, goats, hygiene, hair care, families, periods, babies, etc. This will require hiring and training a coordinator. In addition, we want to bring inspirational guest speakers from Nairobi to talk to the girls once a month: a lady lawyer, a lady doctor, a lady chief...some strong Kenyan role models for girls who don't see many options. We had over 70 girls turn up for an informal meeting about this in December 2008, so we know there is interest. If we are successful in Sipili, we would explore creating Girls Clubs in each of our centers. We have sent funding requests to several organizations here in Kenya in an effort to get this started.
Family Reading Groups: Family reading is a new concept here, as is reading for pleasure generally. We would like to set up family reading groups, initially in Kawangware and Mathare North centres. The idea would be to invite parents to come and learn about family reading and some tips for reading aloud with children of all ages, from infancy on up. Parents would then be given a book-bag of books to share with their children. Each week, parents could return the bag of books and receive a different selection. Setting this up will require some staff training, sturdy bags for holding the books, and careful monitoring to make sure books are returned, and that the books selected are a good fit for the children in each family.
More Book Clubs: Right now we have two successful book groups operating as partnerships with Nairobi international schools - Braeburn and International School of Kenya. We are trying to find international school partners to pair with Eastleigh and Sipili.
Ministry of Youth: Anne and Patrick went to visit the Ministry of Youth, and later took four members from the Ministry to visit Mathare North centre. They are interested in KLT creating libraries attached to their Youth Empowerment Centres. We are currently working on a proposal for this. As our centres are run by youth members, and all activities are organised by youth, we feel we have a big role to play in giving the young people of Kenya a chance to shine.
Adult and Continuing Education: We are still waiting for the Directorate of Adult and Continuing Education to get back to us. We are VERY keen to start adult education sessions in all of our centres –OUTSIDE OF LIBRARY OPENING HOURS!!- and hope the department will be able to assist in making this possible.
Staff Training: Anne held a staff training session on ‘Storytelling using books written in English’ on February 11th. Staff from Maili Saba, Eastleigh and Kasarani attended.
Mary is continuing to train all our staff in the use of sign language at our monthly meetings. She was concerned that what she is teaching is actually being used by the staff.
