FAVL volunteer Chelsea Rangel spent three months in Burkina Faso doing some amazing things in the library. One of her jobs was to pilot a new program we're working on for volunteers to produce "microbooks" that will be printed in very small runs, and will be very relevant to the local readers. Chelsea worked with the librarians and village residents to produce three books. The text is in French and Dioula, a language spoken by several million people in the region (also known as Bamana), but there are very few books in the Burkinabè version of Dioula. Volunteers Kathryn Ranney and Amy Reggio helped a lot with post-production, and the Santa Clara Rotary Club helped with a grant to cover most of the printing costs. Moquin Press up in Belmont, CA is about to print them up... here's some images. Charlie Wasser was great as the intermediary to lots of stuff to make this happen. We couldn't have done it without the constant encouragement of Kathy Knowles at Osu Children's Library Fund. To all... thanks!!!! These books will end up costing about $5 each, because of the limited small print run. Very few people in rural villages can afford to purchase a book at that price. The average daily wage in a village is something like 50 cents, so $5 is ten days of work. So we depend on grants like the one from Rotary and your generosity to be able to get these books to kids who will read them. Over and over again, in all likelihood.
1 comment:
What beautiful photographs! Sounds liek a fabulous project. Hooray for Chelsea and FAVL!
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