Youth perform a literacy skit at the 2014 Kayonza event.

We’re happy to share the news that Grace Rwanda has again been invited to participate in Rwanda Reads this September.

We’ll be participating a special Literacy Day Expo at our Kayonza YEGO Youth Centre community library on Sept. 29 to mark the end of the month-long national reading festival. The country-wide literacy festival kicked off on Sept. 8 on UNESCO’s International Literacy Day.

The Expo will include interactive stations where youth can read and write and create, as well as book stations and other activities. Last year’s event included two oral storytellers that wowed the crowd. Grace Rwanda also   provided book prizes to help further encourage youth to get involved in a culture of reading.

We’ll report back with pictures from this special event later this fall.

In the meantime, we’d also like to update you on our latest fundraising campaign. Grace Rwanda is actively working to send a shipping container full of books to Rwanda this fall to help stock several additional youth libraries.

Our Rwandan dinner fundraiser raised $3,000 and books are being collected with the help of the Rotary Club of Langley Sunrise. Now a new Langley Rotary Club District grant will help us create two more libraries in the coming year.

We’d like to sincerely thank our partners for their support and vision in making this next phase possible.

You can get regular updates on our work by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.