Libraries for All: A Conversation with Kingsley Sintim, founder of the Tasha Community Library (III)

He currently works as an engineer in Abuja technology village, where he recently finished his NYSC service. In the concluding section of this interview, he told me about all the support he has received for his project – CarmenTell me more about the support you’ve gotten.It is really touching how a lot of support has […]

He currently works as an engineer in Abuja technology village, where he recently finished his NYSC service. In the concluding section of this interview, he told me about all the support he has received for his project – Carmen
Tell me more about the support you’ve gotten.
It is really touching how a lot of support has been coming in. We have gotten a 22,000 book donation from Books for Africa in the U.S., which we are processing right now. They have collected the books, we are supposed to convey the cash to ship it down to Nigeria. We need $15,200 dollars to ship the book container down from the U.S. Fundraising is ongoing, but we have raised about 75%. In April, we hosted the Executive Director of Books for Africa, Dr. Patrick Plonski, and Mr. Mike Essien, a board member, alongside the United States Embassy team in. We had a book reading event together, a poem presentation by the children, a gift donation in books band souvenirs by the visiting team, and the event was topped up with local dance to celebrate the visit. The guests also partook of the rhythmic local drumming vibes. 
How did you go about doing this campaign to get people involved?
I had a very good proposal, number one. Even when I talked to NYSC about it, I tried to be very intentional. I didn’t want it just to be a project. I had a specific plan. I was guided.  I read and sourced for ideas. I got a UNESCO document Libraries for All! by Laurel Wendell, and  I followed it step by step. I was able to follow through on everything that was in it, so that I didn’t hit a wall at the end of the day. The document guided me. It even created ideas on how to decorate the library and raise funds. There were a lot of things I did, and the packaging was really nice. There was a man I met for the first time, and he gave me 100,000 naira. I never met him before. I just gave him the proposal, and he was really impressed and gave N100,000, which really helped in buying the shelves and getting other local items for the library.
So that is the packaging and organization of the whole proposal. At a time I was even discouraged because they weren’t really responding. I had to call them up and send hard copies, and send mails and all that.
I did a book drive, going to people, networking. Somebody called me from the FCT administration and told me I should give a proposal to them, which I did, and they donated building materials to the library. The minister for the FCT donated some materials. They gave the materials from the FCT Administration community development department. The organization where I did my youth service has a foundation, the ATV Foundation. They gave us AC,  chairs, and workstations. At the commissioning, people donated desktops. People donated books, people donated chairs to the library, and gave cash donations. The strategy we worked with was first of all to get one-on-one communication, then identify people who seem likely to support the project.
There is Book Aid International. I really like what they do. What they do is partner with an organization that supports book projects in Africa, Ford Foundation and all that, making a partnership possible. Their recommendation paid off as we were able to connect with relevant foundations and agencies concerned with book projects in Nigeria. One question on my mind was how we can make it sustainable? That’s the whole idea.
If someone wants to get involved, what can they do to help?
Honestly, we need volunteers to come in from time to time. They can send in books.  We need mentors. Most of these children don’t have a clue what the world out there is like. They come from a very poor environment. Their parents have not gone to school. If volunteers can come in and mentor these children, we can even do an online forum on Skype and others, so that these people can communicate with these children and be a role model.  Volunteers can also “adopt” one of them, by supporting a family to pay their children’s school fees (N2000-7000), donate solar powered reading lamps to these children so they can do their homework at night when there is power outage, or do something charitable at their own discretion. Most of the children are very, very poor. Even when they pass out of secondary school, getting to university becomes a problem, because most of them cannot fund themselves for school. We appreciate willing or interested people who want to offer themselves as volunteers, mentoring these children, or supporting with books or even donations.
We want to expand the place. Right now we only have room for about thirty people, and the community has over eight hundred school age children. We are hoping to expand the structure, and people are even coming from far. Like recently, we had a programme, a partnership with the Centre for Ethics and values. We took members of the library to train them on ethics and values. The benefit is not only helping children become literate by using  the library, it also acts as a community resource centre, where outside people who want to help can come there and provide training. We are trying to get our members within the community, the vulnerable children, and expose them to best practices. Books change lives. We are also trying to set up a garden, to promote agriculture, and inspire children on farming. Most of their parents are farmers, so a lot of them have a garden.
There are a lot of plans coming up. We need technical support and funding. So, for example, Longman, even if they can’t give us the books, they can give us discounts. We need to get qualitative books. We need encyclopedias, we need journals for children. And we need projectors, so that we can show them films, like National Geographic.  You know children like to be captivated, something colourful. The idea is to sustain the momentum and spark their creative minds, show them science museums around the world, show them how to become better persons. I am currently looking at research by Dr. Sugata Mitra, The Hole in the Wall, on exposing children to technology and creating inclusive educational solutions that address all sections of society and help transform them.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Setting up a library doesn’t cost that much. In case people want to do a project like that, there are a lot of materials to help them to get it done.  Just google “how to start up a library.” When I was doing this research, I was getting information from different community libraries across other African countries, like there was a community library from the Gambia, one from Ethiopia, Togo. I would just go and ask how they did their own. There are a lot of materials out there.
We can go out there and make it happen for children. You can transform a child’s life. There is a drive, a hunger for books. People say they don’t even like reading. That’s not true. People will like to read once there are good books around.  There are some children who don’t do very well in school, they come to the library and they won’t even know where the time has gone because they are reading a book and the book is so interesting to them.  Once you can make a book available to them and create an environment, and just encourage them, these children can do better in academics, and become better people.
(Concluded)