The Musangu Foundation team spent today collecting over 3000 books for the Schools4Schools Rural Community Library Project, the books have been donated by primary schools in the Luton area over the past year.

The library will be located in a rural village in the Mazabuka district of Zambia, due to a lack of government funding books are very difficult to come by and most schools have an exceptionally limited supply of reading materials. The library will be designed to complement the local school curriculum to maximise the impact on child literacy with an emphasis on improvement of English language. Most secondary education in Zambia requires children to read and write in English, we want to increase the opportunity for children in disadvantaged rural communities to reach their full potential and complete their schooling. 

Access to an education is one of the only opportunities young people have to end the cycle of poverty and attain a better quality of life than previous generations. Books and good quality educational material are the cornerstone of a strong education system, they are paramount to a child’s learning and development – the vast majority of children within Zambia have never owned a book.

Literacy is not just important for children but for all members of the community - literate parents are more likely to keep their children healthy and see value in sending their children to school, literate people are better able to access employment opportunities, and collectively, literate societies are better geared to meet development challenges. We want to open up the rural library to serve the whole of the community, allowing people to come in and access books, educational materials, run vocational workshops and English classes to benefit all.

The programme will continue to approach UK schools, publishers and libraries to obtain more pre-owned or surplus book stock piles. We aim to ship the collected books out to Zambia in June 2016 and begin the process of setting up the library, identifying and training a librarian and recruiting community library champions to help support and manage the facility.

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