You know the old saying, it takes a village to raise a child? Collaboration is so important in achieving child development goals. In our line of literacy work, you could say it takes a library to raise a reader.

That’s why Grace Rwanda makes an effort to partner with other literacy-promotion projects whenever we can — to reach our goals of raising a generation of Rwandan readers that much faster.

Our latest collaboration is with a wonderful non-profit organization called the African Storybook Project.

The project, an initiative of the South African Institute for Distance Education, offers free downloadable stories and reading resources for children and educators that provide early readers with stories in their own African languages with familiar cultural touch points, to improve literacy.

Educators can also create and upload or translate new stories for use as well as download and print books for free. They are working with teachers and librarians at 14 pilot sites in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Lesotho.

Grace Rwanda has signed a memorandum of understanding with SAIDE and will be working to get some of these stories available in Kinyarwanda. Plus we’ll be promoting the resource to our own partner schools and new youth centre libraries. Check out their web site and have a read!

This is just one of the initiatives we are working on in the run up to this year’s UNESCO International Literacy Day, held this year on Monday September 8th.

Grace Rwanda has been invited to join in a week-long literacy campaign and symposium to mark the event to be held in Rwanda by Rwanda Library Services. We’re still in the planning stages, but hoping we can participate and involve our two newest youth centre libraries. In the meantime, you can read up on UNESCO International Literacy Day and how to support global youth literacy efforts.