Wall of Words – Update
For last year’s pilot Wall of Words program, we worked with Books for Africa, an organization based out of the United States, to bring thousands of books to Rwanda. We were able to distribute these books among a number of schools, which we went back to visit on this year’s project trip.
Rwanda School Project
First, we visited Robin Strickler at her current Rwanda School Project location. The organization is renting a space for the school as it awaits the start of construction on the new school in Rwamagana, which should begin in August 2009, with classrooms completed in January 2010. The school is currently offering an English Bridge Program, a 30-week program for 22 students ages 13-20, to address the government’s recent policy changing the language of education from French to English. Students are mostly low-income, and just over half are orphans; they are also older than the traditional age for students in grade 7 due to the effects of the genocide and poverty. In Rwamagana, the school’s focus will be on general secondary education and sustainability.
Most of the books that we donated to Rwanda School Project are in storage, awaiting the new school. In the meantime, Robin had chosen some of the lower level books that we had given the school to get the students interested in reading. These texts turned out to be very popular, as most of the students’ reading levels are below their grade level. Before our trip, Robin had written to me,
We are still in the process of cataloguing the books and it is so terrific that we have them. We’re deeply grateful! Some of the most exciting for us are the series of 8th grade readers, which include literature and short stories from terrific variety of authors, and the literature anthologies. We also were excited about some of the history books and especially about the young adult reading that we can include in our library. Many, many thanks again…
ETO Gitarama
One of the other projects we revisited was ETO Gitarama. Last year, we donated the majority of the books, as well as solar equipment to develop a maintenance and installation program, to this secondary and technical vocational school of roughly 400 students. Students in the school were experiencing some difficulty in preparing for the complete switch to English as the language of education, and acting headmaster Ezekiel Ngoboka was glad to have a large repository of technical, instructional, and general reading materials available to the students in the English language. According to Ezekiel and the student librarian, the books that were getting the most use were the lower level general English books, mostly the instructional ones.
It wasn’t just the ETO students that were getting use out of the books; the school had started a lending program with other schools around the country. Schools from Kigali to Butare were coming to Gitarama, where they would fill out a form stating which books they had borrowed, use the books at their schools, and then return them when they were done. As one of the issues that we wanted to address with our future Wall of Words programs was distribution, we were pleased that these schools were working together to mine this resource. Additionally, ETO has opened up its library to the surrounding community. Anyone, student or community member, can come to the library from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 1:30 to 4 p.m. on Saturday and use the books.
For more information about Wall of Words, be sure to visit the program page.
Ashley
