Press Release 2 / 2006-2008
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Bologna International Children's Book Fair<br>IBBY Press Conference, 2007
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
Today, IBBY announced its extensive new programme of workshops and its three new projects for Children in Crisis.
IBBY called on publishers around the world assembled at the Bologna International Children's Book Fair to support IBBY’s national sections in their work of bringing children to a life long love of reading, to work with them in the stimulation of national publishing programmes and to actively work for the translation of works from all languages into all languages – an activity which is sadly decreasing.
President Patricia Aldana congratulated our long standing National Section in Venezuela, Banco del Libro, on winning the 2007 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) and praised the ALMA committee for using this prestigious award to promote reading and to support the Banco’s pioneering work in Bibliotherapy.
On a more disheartening note, IBBY president expressed IBBY’s dismay at recent actions taken by the government of Mexico to cut back on the funds available to what is widely seen as being the most enlightened government programme in support of reading and a model in the world – the Bibliotecas del Rincón/Bibliotecas del Aula of the Secretaría de Educación Pública
Today, IBBY launched a worldwide appeal for funds in support of the Children in Crisis Programme and, in particular, for the newly approved project to bring reading clubs to displaced young people and children in Colombia who are victims of the armed conflict. Furthermore, we are appealing for funds to support projects in development in Afghanistan and the Ixchil region of Guatemala. Help us to help the many children whose lives are disrupted by natural disasters, war and other civil disorder. IBBY announced that it has received a guaranteed donation that will match any funds donated up to CHF 100,000. Please contact the IBBY Secretariat or any of the IBBY Executive Committee if you wish to support us in this increasingly necessary endeavour.
Children in Crisis
The first project to be run under the Children in Crisis programme is currently being undertaken in Lebanon. The recent war that so badly affected the country and in particular the people of Southern Lebanon, has left many of the children traumatized. The project under the title Conflict Control is organized by Julinda Abu Nasr of IBBY Lebanon with a team of experts from the Lebanese American University and the American University of Beirut. The project calls for the use of storybooks and other art forms, which they can use to deal with the human emotions that have been strained during the conflict. Teachers will be trained in the use of Bibliotherapy, thus ensuring long-term benefits in the region.
Thanks to a most generous contribution by Katherine Paterson, winner of the 1998 Hans Christian Andersen Award and the 2006 ALMA, IBBY will be able to support a project in Gaza, Palestine where children are experiencing terrible trauma due to deprivation and the constant disruption brought about by the occupation. The project will create two libraries in community centres. In addition, it will run a training programme for the library staff, and include outreach training throughout Gaza in Bibliotherapy. The Tamer Institute for Community Education, IBBY's Palestinian section based in Ramallah, will manage the project.
The project in Colombia, which urgently needs funding, will create reading clubs for 1,000 children, many of them living in shelters after being displaced as a result of the sixty years of conflict that Colombia has been suffering. Young people, also victims of the war, will be trained in Bibliotherapy and will lead the clubs. The project will also provide circulating libraries of books specially selected for their suitability for children in crisis. The aim of the project is to encourage the children to acquire verbal ways of understanding their experiences and for dealing with their resulting trauma. This project will be managed by 2007 ALMA winner the Banco del Libro, a pioneer in Bibliotherapy, together with Asolectura, an organization that has been working with street children in Colombia for many years.
IBBY-Yamada workshops and projects
Under the banner of the IBBY campaign "The Child's Right to Become a Reader: Books for Children Everywhere", in 2007 there are nine different projects around the world aimed at bringing children and books together. In Havana, Cuba there will be a workshop on writing and illustration; in India the project will establish libraries in two community centres: in Arunachal Pradesh (N. India) and in New Delhi. Training sessions will be organized with parents, social workers and teachers to teach them how to promote the reading habit; in Jakarta, Indonesia a publishing workshop designed to equip the participants with basic knowledge and some of the skills needed to publish and distribute quality books for teenagers; in Antananarivo, Madagascar, the Bobiko project is designed to develop a children's book culture: books in the local language as well as bilingual books; in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia the workshop comprises a five-day course to study design, layout and illustration; in Ramallah, Palestine a workshop for professional editing of children's literature; in Cape Town, South Africa "Books where there are no books": the project is designed to encourage children to gather stories from their parents, grandparents and neighbours and subsequently turn them into written stories; in Kampala, Uganda there will be a workshop on writing and illustrating skills for children’s storybooks; in Montevideo, Uruguay the project is designed to promote support and training for people who work with children and young people, concentrating on training modules for public schools. Most of these projects are organized by our national sections in their own countries, and in some cases by twinning with another section.
The 2005 virtual exhibition project Books for Africa. Books from Africa, will be updated and continue to highlight books from and for Africa. We are pleased to confirm that the management of the project will be done in the future by Carole Bloch, coordinator of the Early Literacy Unit, PRAESA (Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa) in Cape Town. We thank her for her support of this worthwhile project.
These projects are funded by the IBBY-Yamada Fund, which was initiated thanks to the generosity of Hideo Yamada of Japan.
Other IBBY activities
The 2007 selection of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities was launched at the press conference. Heidi Boiesen, director of the IBBY Documentation Centre of Books for Disabled Young People, which is based at the Haug School and Resource Centre in Bekkestua, Norway, has selected 62 outstanding books from around the world. This is the largest selection ever and demonstrates the growing interest that these books are creating.
Important information was made available concerning the next IBBY World Congress. The 31st IBBY Congress will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7-10 September 2008 under the theme Stories in History – History in Stories.
IBBY's regular projects continue to be the backbone of IBBY's work around the world: the IBBY Honour List, the Hans Christian Andersen Awards, the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award, IBBY's quarterly journal Bookbird, and the International Children's Book Day – this year presented by IBBY New Zealand.
Information about the above activities and the IBBY National Sections can be found on the IBBY website at: www.ibby.org
Patricia Aldana / April 2007
Donations
For information about how to make donations, please contact the IBBY Secretariat.