Newswise — ZAMBEZI, Zambia – The district of Zambezi, located in northwestern Zambia, recently received its first community library, a new two-room building consisting of 20,000 books and a technology center, thanks to Gonzaga University and cooperating partners. A five-hour ceremony May 27 dedicated the facility on the grounds of the Chilena Basic School. Festivities included a Literacy Awareness Walk from Zambezi Civic Center to the library, followed by speeches, traditional dancing, drummers and song, poetry readings, and food and drink. Headmaster Elvis Musuka and the school’s Parent Teacher Association developed the idea in 2008 as a strategic means to help achieve the school’s mission “to be a leading primary school in academic excellence and to produce healthy, capable and intelligent leaders of tomorrow across gender.” The Gonzaga-in-Zambezi program, led by Josh Armstrong, helped make the library a reality by contributing some $30,000 to the project through the sale of Zambia Gold honey. This marks the ninth consecutive summer that Armstrong has led Gonzaga students on intercultural servant-leadership course trips to Zambia. “We also raised $16,000 to support the 20,000 books to be delivered,” said Armstrong, who directs Gonzaga’s Comprehensive Leadership Program. Through the support of Gonzaga donors, these books are being delivered through Books for Africa, an organization that ships books from the United States to Africa. The Gonzaga-in-Zambezi program forms meaningful and productive relationships between Gonzaga students and the Zambezi community. Zambia Gold is a successful student-run partnership that markets the local and organically harvested honey in the United States. All proceeds from Zambia Gold were dedicated to the library project. “This library represents the physical product of a long friendship between GU, Chilena Basic and the whole Zambezi community,” Armstrong said. “We heard your cries for literacy and knowledge and we are proud to walk hand-in-hand with you on this journey. We are excited to see these books enrich the learning of Chilena pupils and the people of Zambezi district.” Samuel Maseka, District Standards of Education officer in Zambezi, said the library will benefit the entire district and strengthens the partnership between Gonzaga and the people of Zambia. The library represents a step toward fulfilling the national initiative of 1 million Zambian readers in 2015, he added. “The library will be a community resource where knowledge can be received from books and computers and exchanged between community members of all ages and economic status,” Musuka said. The library also is expected to improve community leadership, economics and health initiatives.
Read more about the effort in Gonzaga blogs at http://gonzagainzambezi.org/2015/05/18/together-we-can/ and http://gonzagainzambezi.org/2015/05/27/small-steps-hand-in-hand/. For more information, please contact Josh Armstrong via email at [email protected].
RSS