Ghanaian Library Project

Wo ho te sen?! ('How are you?', in twi)

Having now constructed our first library project inside the Messiah International School, this page has been created to start fundraising towards two further projects. Firstly, Brighton College are fundraising for our first stand-alone library in Akumaden. We think that it will cost approximately £16,000 to build, with more for furnishings and transferral of books. Secondly, the Pre-Prep School are aiming to fundraise £3000 to create a small library inside a school (details to be confirmed following an Easter trip out to Ghana).

Note that we are only fundraising through Brighton College until 'Reading Spots' is accepted as a registered charity.

This page will be used to collect funds for a variety of challenges and activities that we will be engaging in.

Akumaden Community Library

After considering a vast number of locations in Ghana, we have decided that the Akumaden region in the North Offinso region would be the best location for the first separate library, for the following reasons:

• We have an extremely trustworthy point of contact here, Pastor James Dugger. He has the ability to manage substantial projects (alongside the Dreamland School which has nearly 600 pupils, he has recently created a huge and well-resourced local community Health Centre, which is a very substantial and effective project.) He fully supports the idea of the library and is more than happy to help with overseeing the project.
• The North Offinso region (containing over 200 schools) does not have a single community library.
• The specific location in central Akumaden has at last four schools within 300m of the proposed site. The locals we surveyed in the nearby community were extremely enthusiastic about the proposal.
• Pastor James Dugger has offered us a disused site of land, which is owned by his mother and was the original site of the Dreamland School when it was first created. It is surprisingly difficult to find plots of land in the middle of a village, and this is an appropriate size. We have met his supportive mother, who lives next door.
• The village chiefs and elders have agreed to pay the salary of the librarians.

Functions of the Akumaden Library
We hope that the libraries (with the first Akumaden library as an initial model) could perform a variety of functions to support the local community - its scope for assistance is certainly not limited to providing books to read (as important as this function is). Possible additional roles include:

• Literacy classes and IT sessions for adults (led by local volunteers/ paid librarians)
• After school book club (led by school mentors)
• Poetry reading and creative writing competitions
• BC staff potentially to provide informal individual support via email to local adults. (For example Cat Davison has been proof-reading a play for a Ghanaian playwright). Bethany Sims (English Teacher who has been giving English grammar lessons via email to a local teacher).

Research: Last July Cat Davison visited six community libraries (in Accra and the Volta Region), and spent a week volunteering in the Cathy Knowles Community Library in the Osu region of Accra assisting with day-to-day library activities such as covering and stamping books, reading with the children, and teaching English in the popular free adult literacy sessions. This, alongside consulting Kathy Knowles who has set up a charity (The Osu Library Trust) with similar aims, working in Accra, has certainly helped us to gain a clearer picture of the (many) challenges ahead.

Follow the Progress!
To find out more about the progress of these projects and Reading Spots follow us on twitter: twitter.com/readingspots, or on Facebook facebook.com/readingspots. We also hope to get purchase the domain name readingspots.org and set up a website shortly. To contact us by email for more information, our addresses are cdavison@brightoncollege.net and pwilson@brightoncollege.net. We can be contacted at new address: readingspots@gmail.com. If you know of any organization, school, or individual who may be interested in supporting our cause, please do ask them to get in touch.

Once again, thank you so much for your support. Your donation will hopefully make a significant difference to the lives of thousands of Ghanaians in the years to come, so many of whom yearn to read books but have no means to access to them. We firmly believe that improved access to education for all ages is the route to improved living conditions in Ghana.

Medace!! (Thank you in twi!)

Reading Spots Team