Community Libraries & Combating Illiteracy as a lever to Community Development

MOHAMMED, Yusra and AWAD, Manal (2014) Community Libraries & Combating Illiteracy as a lever to Community Development. Paper presented at: IFLA WLIC 2014 - Lyon - Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge in Session 169 - Literacy and Reading. In: IFLA WLIC 2014, 16-22 August 2014, Lyon, France.

Bookmark or cite this item: https://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/955
[img]
Preview
Language: English (Original)
Available under licence Creative Commons Attribution.

Abstract

Community Libraries & Combating Illiteracy as a lever to Community Development

Trust Programs offers various services to marginalized groups in the Palestinian society, especially to villages located in the north west of Jerusalem. These villages are situated behind the annexation wall which isolates them from other urban areas and makes transport and access to social services difficult due to road closures, check-points and restrictions on movement. In many cases these villagers have no access to schools and other educational institutions. With this as a starting point, Trust Programs started working with village communities to establish a community school in partnership with the Palestinian Ministry of Education (MoE), Once the school was established a community library in Al-Jeeb Village was used as a model for other villages in the area. Al-Jeeb community Library is the first community library project to be successfully conducted and implemented and has become a model for other PA and UNRWA schools. This program offers a range of techniques to combat illiteracy and conduct education and community work by learning through dialogue, so participants can reach a level of knowledge which will improve their daily lives. They are able to attain higher achievements in school which creates new opportunities for different generations either through learning, creating job opportunities, or sharing experiences, and cultural and traditional knowledge. The paper will describe how the community library assisted in combating illiteracy in marginalized areas, and how women who are usually neglected in these areas are now the agents of change in their communities.

FOR IFLA HQ (login required)

Edit item Edit item
.