Literacy Outreach Project – A New Partnership with Regional Schools to Promote School Libraries.

In an effort to promote readership to school-aged children who cannot easily access the Pamoja Library facility, we launched a literacy outreach project to bring thousands of books closer to these children. The project is designed to loan books on a rotational basis to schools that have a safe building designated as a library but lacks books (as is the norm for majority of schools in rural areas in the country), and a dedicated full-time librarian. The books will be on loan for 6-12 months and once returned to the Pamoja Library, a new collection will be issued. The schools, in return, are obligated to provide Pamoja Library with readership data which will be critical in studying trends and subsequently aid in future decision-making efforts for the project.

Machungulu Primary School, with about 1,000 students and situated an hour from the Pamoja Library, was chosen for the pilot program. The school met all the criteria required for the project as well as a dedicated school leadership team which was extremely optimistic about the impact of a well-equipped library for their students. In January 2021, the project was launched, and the school received 1,000 books from the Pamoja Community Library.