Latest Press Release about the Growth of EBCEF
Awassa, Ethiopia -- Queen Helina stepped confidently into the street, resplendent in her red cape and her silver-lined red crown. A retainer with a red umbrella shielded her from the sun, separating her from two other donkeys pulling a cart of books. Behind them were 3,000 children, marching in the inaugural parade of Ethiopia’s first Donkey Mobile Library in Awassa, a town 166 miles south of Addis Abbaba. The Children were chanting; "Queen Helina We Want Books!"
“Queen Helina and her fellow donkeys are at the forefront of bringing books and the love of reading to Ethiopia’s rural areas,” said Yohannes Gebregeorgis , founder of the Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation (EBCEF). Since the parade last year, Queen Helina’s team has increased to four donkeys, enough to share the burden of carrying more than 2,000 books. The Donkey Mobile Library sets up shop in poor neighborhoods of Awassa where children check out books for the day or just sprawl on the bare ground to read.
This mobile library is the latest project Yohannes uses to reduce illiteracy and promote reading in Ethiopia. Not much has changed since he fled his country as a political refugee more than 25 years ago. The government estimates that 58 percent of Ethiopians aged 15 and older cannot read. A World Bank study reveals that only 76 percent of boys and 52 percent of girls enroll in primary school. A third of them leave before reaching second grade.
Yohannes grew up without access to a library and he did not read his first non-fiction book until he was 19. As a political refugee in the USA, Yohannes studied to be a librarian. He then worked as a children’s librarian at the San Francisco Public Library. Despite the large Ethiopian community in the area, he found few books in Amharic or other Ethiopian languages.
In 1998, together with children’s book author Jane Kurtz, they organized EBCEF. Their first project was to publish a book based on an Ethiopian tale, Silly Mammo. Sales of the book, as well as grants from The Global Fund for Children and others, now support the EBCEF’s work.
Yohannes returned to live in Addis Abbaba in 2002 with a container of 15,000 books. In 2003 he opened the Shola Children's Library -- the first such library in Ethiopia – in the groundfloor of his house. Eventually two tents were pitched outside to accommodate more children.
About 8,000 children use it, making as many as 60,000 visits a month. An 8-year-old boy, Robel, who used to hold books upside down until he learned to read, is now the library’s star reader, reading aloud to other children every Saturday. “We have successfully connected the children with books and have given them a sense of empowerment,” said Yohannes.
His passion for literature and the need to raise literacy rates led Yohannes to establish a reading center and the first mobile library in his home region of Awassa. There Queen Helina reigns as a symbol for reading and Yohannes plans to expand her kingdom with more libraries for Ethiopia’s children.
No comments:
Post a Comment