It has been three months since the first official Tanzania Community Library Association workshop took place! Time is flying by! The last three months our members have been waiting eagerly for the elected steering committee to finalize a constitution so that our new association can be registered. The draft has been completed and our steering committee now only waits to meet together to review and agree on its contents. As an association we are not legally able to fundraise until registration as a charity has been completed and so we are struggling with securing enough funds to bring our committee together. We are therefore reaching out to any private donor(s) who would contribute to help us meet as a steering committee to finalize the documents required to register our association.
As an association we have the intention to act as a support network for community libraries all across Tanzania. It has been discussed at our workshop in February that some of our aims and goals should be:
1- To network all the community libraries across the country
2- To find grants and resources and make them available to community libraries
3- To sensitize and support the development of community libraries
As our association grows stronger our hope is to provide training workshops for all our members. In order to host these workshops there is a need to have a coordinator who can actively research and apply for appropriate grants and a supportive steering committee that can contribute and support the coordinators efforts. It is our hope to be able to host at least one training workshop in 2012, funding permitting. Some examples of successful training workshops, based on Uganda Community Library Association’s, are Children’s Books and Reading as a family and Libraries for Health.
Our steering committee members are as follows;
1- Mussa Gunda
2- Kajia Mjema
3- Husna Mahamud
4- Abdul Kadir
5- Rahim Niah (Volunteer Coordinator)
6- Elibahati Abraham
7- Sarah Switzer
If you have any inquiries, comments, or are interested in donating please email us at maktaba4afrika@yahoo.ca (Sarah Switzer) AND coseta09@gmail.com (Rahim Niah)

Sorry about only posting two photos.  More to come!!!

Our Librarian and library members envisioned having a place to read outside their village library.  It took time, but finally we see the grasses covering the red earth and banana trees popping up!  Thank you Kwekitui village members for caring for the library garden.  I hope that it gives back to you as much as you have given to it, to see that it grew into such a lush inviting environment.

February 14, 15, 16 there will be a workshop held for community library workers from all across Tanzania.  This workshop has full funding for participants who apply and are eligible to attend.  I am very excited to be part of the planning and teaching with some amazing colleague ladies.

Grace Musoke from Uganda Community Library Assocation will be attending as a workshop speaker and organizer.  Karen Sharkey from Book Aid comes as an experienced and passionate librarian and NGO worker who worked very hard to find the funding to make this workshop possible.  I do believe we may also have a lady, Agnes, joining us from Haki Elimu, a great leading organization in Tanzania in terms of breaking through barriers in the formal and informal education of the nation.

I have received applications from many community libraries in Tanzania, but I hope to see many more!  The deadline for application submissions is January 24, 2011.  That day is coming up very quickly so please get your applications in right away.  You can email it to maktaba4afrika@yahoo.ca or send it by post to Sarah Switzer, PO Box 1452, Tanga, Tanzania.

If you do not have a copy of the application form please email myself or Karen (karen.sharkey@bookaid.org) and we will be more than happy to give you one.

I hope to see all you library friends at the workshop!

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 17 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 28 posts. There were 17 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 28mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 21st with 43 views. The most popular post that day was Chamazi Library.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, profiles.tigweb.org, mail.live.com, and utrt.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for sarahswitzer.wordpress.com/, chamazi, utrt, chamazi tanzania, and chamazi community library.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Chamazi Library February 2009
8 comments

Sarah says… February 2009
6 comments

Kwekitui Library February 2009
2 comments

Kathy Says… March 2009
6 comments

Current Events! February 2009
2 comments