New books and new spaces at the library

          "Oh for a diamond or two" sighed a new friend as we talked about pulling our resources to make story telling at our libraries work. 


Governments and public-sector organisations, not-for-profit organizations, and foundations must increasingly provide greater services to citizens. The reality is that their budgets seldom increase to meet these needs. 

Partnering with local businesses can lead to a win-win solution for everyone involved. It is more than Corporate Social Responsibility. It is more than 'fishing for funds'. By investing in libraries...and then using them....we secure our future through our children. And, lets face it, populations that read are good for business too. Zimbabwean Pride. 

When I went looking for volunteers to help me read, I found a whole lot more. Two people stuck out - Nigel Mugamu of Blackstone Bookstore and Lisa-Jane Campbell of the Chishakwe Ranch (part of the Save Conservancy Trust). Both have decided to give back to their local community and help fix up Mount Pleasant Library. The first thing they decided to do is to help build a beautiful space for reading and storytelling to take place. An artist has been found, paint provided and some benches and hardware sourced through Nigel's father at Mount Pleasant Hardware store. How awesome is that? Painting should begin in a fortnight. In the meantime materials are being gathered and the artistis finalising a sketch of the new space. So watch this space for progress.

And today, those diamonds we wished for appeared. Not as we had originally thought but as £1000 from the British Embassy as part of the Queens Diamond Jubilee. Heehee. 

Having been given rather short notice the HCL committee decided to use it for storytelling books. SMASHING! 

The BIGGEST SINGLE CHALLENGE the library faces is a tired, overused and dated collection. The library has sooooo few new, exciting, colourful, engaging books.

So with the equivalent of $1560 we get to buy our story tellers some books and put a few 'in library' reading books on the shelves for the children. This meant I could not read today. Thuthani stepped in and saved the day. Yay!

In the meantime I sit here surrounded by sample books, trying to compile 3 storyteller boxes and 3 children's reference packs for 3 branches [the money won't reach much further and will mean around 20 books in the readers box and maybe 30 in the children's reference packs..at a push]. So wish me luck. The handover is on Tuesday morning, will post some photos etc then.