Here’s a photo of our amazing staff, truly the heart of the RCLLC. Over the past 4 and a half months they have come together as a solid team and worked hard in developing their talents and skills, ready to take on our goals for the coming year. Warm wishes from all of us for a peaceful holiday season!

If you walk by on the dirt road you can’t see what’s happening inside. But here, at the Rwinkwavu Community Library and Learning Center, futures are brightening, culture is changing, and an impoverished remote valley of Rwanda is evolving. Grandparents, parents and children are starving for a place that will provide educational and economic transformation and hope. Murakaza Neza. You are welcome. Come inside. 100 illiterate adults have come to the Ready for Reading program to learn how to read and write for the first time.  It’s been a long road. For most of the families, you can go back centuries without finding a literate relative. But these parents, grandparents, and entrepreneurs fill the rooms, determined to transform their futures. Here, 60 year old Cyprien is sitting wide-eyed and attentive in the first row.   Here, a mother sits, taking notes, learning the letter U, what it looks like, what it sounds like. The baby on her back, also receiving early phonetic education. At 3pm, on any given day, as in generations back, you’ll find the same children playing in the same red-dirt road, an unbroken chain  that carries them towards the same destitute future. The red-dirt road is less occupied today. Here, 75 children visit the Ready for Reading program each day, raising the literacy rates little by little. Trained staff hired locally from the neighboring villages lead the children in literacy training, hourly read-a-loud story time, and massive local versions of Simon Says, Indian Chief and Duck Duck Goose. The result is children learning to love reading; learning to love learning. Every day 8 year old Edizo arrives early, waiting for the opportunity to use the books. Edizo can’t read. Yet. Every evening 22 year old Djuma comes to study for his national exams. He’s in third grade. He has no parents. Education was impossible for him in the squalor of the genocide after-math. Now, he’s ready to achieve economic sustainability through literacy. Rwinkwavu is ready. Literacy is bursting from the Library/Learning Center, flooding the valley below. And with it, the economic levels will rise with the tide of literacy; transforming the landscape towards a sustainable and brighter future. Matt          

In collaboration with the Kigali Public Library and the newly inaugurated Rwanda Library services, the Rwinkwavu Community Library and Learning Center (RCLLC) promoted the National Reading Week in the Kayonza District.  Open only since since July, the RCLLC is already positively impacting the district’s reading culture. During the week, the library promoted and hosted several activities aimed at raising the community’s awareness of the importance of literacy and improving thereading culture. Using its beautiful facility, and intelligent and passionate library staff, the RCLLC hosted an extremely successful National Reading Week. Over 115 community members from Rwinkwavu participated in the week’s events.  Community discussions were conducted about the importance of story-telling and leisure reading from a young age, and how literacy can transform access to knowledge for the betterment of oneself, the community, and the entire nation. Children were led by staff in hourly read-alouds and sensitized to the importance not only of being able to read, but of being able to express oneself through writing. The children were then invited to share their own oral stories on stage at the outdoor ampitheatre. Then, each attendee was given their own ‘home-made’ books and had the opportunity to create their own story-books. Also during National Reading Week, the library staff attended community meetings in each of the district’s four cells to sensitize the community to the function and benefits of the RCLLC, and to invite any and all to take advantage of this new and exciting community resource. Additionally, the library staff invited illiterate adults in the community to sign up for the Adult Kinyarwanda Literacy Program and over 100 enrolled. The sky’s the limit for literacy in the Rwinkwavu community. In the future, the library will also offer English language classes, ICT training, and music education. Along with the day-to-day energy and excitement that persists in this rural library, these initiatives are sure to support the Rwanda Library Services mission in spreading literacy and a love for reading and knowledge across the country. Matt