On March 6th, AIDGLOBAL wrote another chapter in the history of promoting reading in Mozambique by holding the 6th meeting of teachers of the Chibuto District Schools Library Network (RBEDC) at Chibuto Secondary School.
This meeting takes place annually and aims to take stock of another year of work in favor of reading and access to books in the province of Gaza. It was attended by more than 80 participants – teachers, librarians and principals of RBEDC schools, director and technicians of the District Service of Education, Youth and Technology of Chibuto, technicians-librarians of district, municipal and provincial libraries supported by AIDGLOBAL and also representatives of the Bibliographic Fund for the Portuguese Language and Chibuto Community Radio.
As part of this initiative, the bilingual book in Portuguese and Xichangana, “O Grão de Milho Mágico” or “Andzoho ya Masalamusu” by Veronique Tadjo and an edition of AIDGLOBAL in partnership with Editora Falas Afrikanas were launched. This work is the first of four titles to be launched as part of the project “Educators in Motion – An Itinerant Education for Early Childhood” which is financed by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and co-financed by Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua I.P.
The first version of the Online Library Management Platform was also made public, which aims to support the administration of the bibliographic collection of libraries already supported by AIDGLOBAL. This tool is being created by Quidgest – Software Plant, within the scope of its social responsibility, in order to facilitate the registration of titles and provide information to all readers.
The extension of the RBEDC from 27 to 30 school libraries with the arrival of a container with more than 35,000 books and school supplies was announced at the meeting. It is a content of which will allow the creation of a school library in the City of Beira which was affected by the cyclone that hit the region in 2019. The container provide support materials to students attending the 10th, 11th and 12th year according to their curricular context. This is the fifth container with school supplies that is sent to Mozambique and is aimed at promoting literacy and encouraging reading.
Mozambican social company Mozambikes donated 27 bicycles in order to facilitate the mobility of teachers that are responsible for libraries. The delivery of the bicycles was due to the family of the German volunteer Christiane who came to this African region to support the work of Mozambikes, but sadly lost her life in 2019. Christiane`s family believed in the cause for which she came to Mozambique: to help identify communities in rural areas that needed bicycles. According to the information by Nilza Bento from Mozambikes, the family raised funds so that the company could support a project in these Mozambican lands and carry out this project in partnership with AIDGLOBAL.
