World Library Partnership
Inform the World Program

CAPCA Board member Kara Malenfant, a librarian at DePaul University, received a Vincentian Endowment Fund grant from DePaul that allowed her to volunteer at a rural school library in South Africa during summer 2001. CAPCA donated $200 so her local counterpart could purchase appropriate books to stock the library.

Read what Kara has to say about her experience:

I never imagined I'd find such a perfect fit to combine my interest in volunteering, travelling in developing countries, cross-cultural understanding and also make use of my skills as a librarian. The Inform the World Program (ITW), organized by World Library Partnership (WLP), fit the bill exactly. RPCV Laura Wendell, who was stationed in Togo in the early nineties, started WLP in 1996 after she returned to the US. During her service she quickly realized people in her village already had a handle on fish farming, which she was sent to teach, but were very interested in reading her Newsweek magazines. She started a reading room, and the rest is history.

The ITW 2001 program placed about two dozen professional librarians in rural South African libraries. Scarce resources and limited training and education make it difficult for librarians in South Africa to provide rural communities the information they need to build a better future. WLP believes that libraries are hallmarks of civil society and democracy. Libraries in developing countries can become tools for global understanding, community development and personal growth.

Under apartheid, quality education and access to information was basically denied to many South African communities. We worked to level the playing field. Volunteers received training and orientation, conducted practical service projects determined by the needs of their host libraries, and attended a book fair with our host counterparts.

I worked at Tenteleni Primary School in the township of KaNyamazane, Mpumalanga Province, near Kruger National Park. The community was very involved, supporting our efforts and demonstrating their commitment to the school and library by providing food and housing during our stay. The 26 educators at Tenteleni, a school with 1,100 learners in grades 1-7, had given up their staff room to create a library and the older boys had made bookshelves from school desks. Additionally, the full-time 2nd grade teacher - who is also one of the librarians - had received 3 weeks of intensive training from a librarian at a well-resourced private school.

I, along with my fellow volunteer partner, had contact with every single child at Tenteleni. Each class came to the library for 30 minutes of story time and library skills training (like care of books, arrangement of library, parts of books, fiction/non-fiction, etc.). The school had recently received 4 donated computers but the educators hadn't learned to use them so we had every educator come for a minimum of 2 hours to cover the basics of a computer, mouse skills, and windows basics. We also processed books, adding approximately 500 titles to the 300 that existed on their shelves already. The spirit, hope and initiative of the Tenteleni students, staff and parents were not only inspirational but also awesome. They have a well-developed fundraising plan in place to develop a media center with new library facilities. I feel confident that the work we did will continue.

Upon completing our three week service project, all the ITW volunteers and African host librarians returned to Pretoria for debriefing and a publishers fair. WLP supplies each African librarian with book certificates to use to purchase materials for their libraries. Many rural libraries have absolutely no budget for new materials and are stocked entirely with donated books from abroad. Donations are often outdated, in poor condition, inappropriate to the communities' needs and actually cost the recipient thousands of dollars in shipping, customs, storage and taxes. These rural libraries have no books in their native languages, no books written by African authors for African audiences and few books written specifically for developing countries. The Book Certificate Program empowers African communities to choose for themselves what materials will be in their libraries. It also contributes to the long-term sustainability of libraries by supporting African publishers and booksellers.

For summer 2002 WLP will send librarians again to South Africa and also to Honduras. If you'd like to find out more visit their website at http://rtpnet.org/wlp. You can also support the Book Certificate Program by making a tax-deductible donation at http://rtpnet.org/wlp/itw2002/bookcert.htm. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about my experiences at malenfan@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu.

Tenteleni Library: