The African Library project has once again donated quite the number of books to the kingdom of Eswatini, forty thousand of them to be exact. The organization that is based in the State of California in the United States is dedicated with sharing knowledge with Africa and has been donating books through Fundza for quite a number of years, some of these often being donated to the vulnerable schools in the country. The charity did work closely with “Friends of Swaziland”, an organisation based in Vermont, who donated funds towards the shipping, handling and distribution of the books.
Fundza chairman Sammy Dlamini expressed a great deal of gratitude because it is his belief that “every child is entitled to having a book to read” and the African Library project was helping them achieve this by donating books to all schools in both the rural and urban areas. The event which was held on Thursday at the ministry if education was a success since The books would in turn provide information on various subjects which would be a great aide in expanding the children’s view and grasp of the writing and reading.
Sipho Zwane who represented the ministry of education also expressed his gratitude because the books received through Fundza are a great help, especially since they were made available to schools with large numbers of OVC students who are unable to afford such books, let alone access them in their communities. One of the major challenges he touched on was the fact that many children, especially in the rural areas, were unable to pay for their school fees, which in turn made books a luxury the school could not afford and a library to be a distant dream.
No school was left unconsidered in the bid to arm every person with knowledge as several colleges were also beneficiaries; the colleges include Gwamile Voctim, CIT, SANU, SCOT and William Pitcher, who benefitted together with a great number of primary schools and high schools throughout he country a feat that Fundza Director, Nonkululeko Mdluli made sure to accomplish as she wanted to insure that all people would have access to the information they need.
Fundza is a non-profit organization that has been working to insure that each and every school has a library with a substantial number of books by 2025. Their partnership with the Africa Library project has been a beautiful and fruitful one for over 10 years. This relationship has touched a number of children in many schools by insuring that their world view was challenged by the content in the books they read.
FUNDZA was founded in 1987. The vision of FUNDZA is promoting life long reading in Eswatini (building a reading nation) The FUNDZA mission is to enrich the nation through literacy by Setting libraries in schools to ensure that young people gain life-long reading skills.