Sharjah Fund Projects 2013

Sharjah IBBY Fund to support two new initiatives Fund green-lights projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan

For immediate release

-- April 2013

The Advisory Committee of the Sharjah IBBY Fund has announced the approval of two new projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan to be financed by the Fund.  These two projects aim to provide underprivileged children in these areas with access to books and support their Right to Become Readers, in line with the goals of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).

Through these projects, children living in refugee camps in Kabul, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan will benefit from long-term reading programmes while children living in South Waziristan, Swat, Pakistan will benefit from the ‘Hope Libraries’ project.

Run by ASCHIANA (Afghanistan’s Children – A New Approach), the project in Afghanistan will focus on encouraging marginalised children in the region’s many Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps to read. With the vast majority of people in this segment of the community never having undergone any formal education, literacy rates in IDP settlements tend to be extremely low. The project aims to increase literacy through training reading assistants, library assistants, and storytellers and providing reading materials via mobile libraries. The project will provide training for three teams consisting of one library assistant, three reading assistants and one storyteller per team in addition to funding a mobile library in each of the three cities.

The ‘Hope Libraries’ project in Pakistan aims to create a cross-country network of small community children’s libraries. The project will be initiated through the organisation of a two-day national conference on various aspects of bibliotherapy, which will bring together various INGOs, government officials, representatives from the corporate sector, media, experts, community-based organisations (CBOs), and volunteer groups from all over the country. The three best low-cost community library ideas put forward during the conference will receive start up grants and further five book bundles will also awarded. The goal of the project is to promote strong, vibrant, and self-sustained community reading programmes by enabling CBOs and NGOs to establish small scale children’s libraries that will promote a reading culture at the grassroots level.

The Sharjah IBBY Fund Advisory Committee approved the funding of these two six-month projects during its second meeting, held in Bologna on the site of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which took place from 25-28 March in Bologna, Italy.

The meeting was chaired by Bodour Al Qasimi, Patron of the UAE Board on Books for Young People, and was attended by Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin, IBBY President, Patricia Aldana President of the IBBY Foundation, Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Amiri, Director of the Sharjah International Book Fair, Marwa Obaid Al Aqroubi, President of the UAEBBY Executive Board, Jehan Al Helou, President of the Palestinian Board on Books for Young People, Hasmig Chahinian, President of the French Board on Books for Young People and Liz Page IBBY Executive Director.

Commenting on the meeting, Bodour Al Qasimi said: “The meeting focussed on the Sharjah IBBY Fund’s role in the coming period, in light of the growing need to provide support to children affected by war and natural disasters or who are under-privileged. We also discussed the opportunities available to ensure that children in need would have access to books and reading-related programmes through the services of the Fund and in collaboration with various relevant bodies.”

She emphasised the Advisory Committee’s commitment to making certain that the projects supported by the Fund reap maximum benefits, as well as to follow up on the outcomes of these projects to ensure the realisation of the goals for which the fund was established.

During the meeting, the Advisory Committee discussed the projects that were approved in the committee’s first meeting, which had been held in London, the latest developments in those projects, and the timeline of their implementation. A number of new projects and initiatives were suggested by the committee members, and the possibility of their implementation was considered.

Furthermore, the Committee reviewed the programme of the first IBBY Conference in the Region of Central Asia to North Africa, which is also being supported by the Fund. It discussed the possible ways in which the objectives of supporting children’s books, and enhancing the culture of reading among the region’s children, could be met through the organisation of the conference.

The Sharjah-IBBY Fund was established by the emirate of Sharjah and the International Board on Books for Young People in early 2012. The Emirate agreed to contribute one million Swiss Francs (AED4 million) towards the objectives of the Fund, over a period of 10 years. The Fund aims to ensure that less privileged children, whose lives are in disarray due to social, economic or political upheavals in their home countries have access to books.