Chake Chake Library promotes reading to children

The ZLS Library in Chake Chake on Pemba Island has been running a weekly programme to promote literacy and libraries to primary school children for over three years. Children come to the library every Friday afternoon to read together, to play games, to draw, sing and act.

The library staff is working hard to get more children involved in the library by building relationships with schools close to the library. However, there is a desperate shortage of Swahili story books for young children in the library so finding funds to buy more locally published books to use for this programme is an ongoing concern at this library.

Storytelling in the library

To celebrate World Book & Copyright Day 2007, ZLS invited students from 10 primary schools to visit ZLS Central Library to participate in storytelling sessions and promote our new collection of locally published Swahili storybooks. The storytelling sessions were run by those 6 ZLS staff members who all took part in workshops on reading promotion and storytelling techniques in March 2007. The response from students and teachers alike throughout the week was very encouraging!

Staff at ZLS Central Library will now be running weekly storytelling sessions for two different primary schools every Wednesday in our new and improved Children's section throughout the school year.

New Swahili books for ZLS Central Library

In a country where Swahili is the mother tongue, it is ironic that 98% of the books in our library collection are in English and are published in the UK or USA. That is why we are always looking for ways to expand our collections of locally produced, Swahili language materials, particularly for children. Research has shown that access to mother tongue materials for neo-literates contributes greatly to ensuring ongoing literacy but ZLS simply does not have the money to buy Swahili books.

To help ZLS to celebrate World Book Day 2007, the British High Commission in Tanzania has given us a small grant to, amongst other things, buy 250 new Swahili books for our Central Library. Now that may not seem like a lot to some, but in effect, we have doubled the amount of Swahili children's books available for loan in our library. The Tanzanian publishing industry is very small so finding good quality Swahili books to buy takes some effort but with the help of the committed staff at CODE-established Children's Book Project and growing local publishers such as Mkuki na Nyota we managed to come up trumps.

WORLD AIDS DAY 2006

For the first time ever, ZLS Central Library ran a week-long WORLD AIDS DAY programme from 27 - 1 December 2006 to promote HIV / AIDS awareness in Zanzibar.

115 primary and 150 secondary students from 10 schools within the Urban and West districts attended this programme and took part in video screenings with facilitated group discussions, small group reading sessions with Q&A, a quiz for secondary school students, and poster design and colouring activities for primary students.

With support from Zanzibar AIDS Commission, Save the Children UK and ZIFF, ZLS was also able to establish a dedicated HIV / AID information corner, with free pamphlets, magazines, books and audiovisual materials, in our Central Library on Unguja.

ZLS Central Library’s new collection of fiction and non-fiction books and audiovisual materials for children and young people about HIV / AIDS was well received and these materials are now available on loan to all library users.