Being a teenager reading volunteer

"It really challenged my comfort zone, it allowed me to come home and really appreciate all the small things in life and all the opportunities that we are lucky to receive." Read 17 year-old, Siena's experience of her time as a volunteer reader with the Book Bus. 

Siena with some of Zambia's eager readers! 

"During the summer of 2017, I spent two weeks in Zambia volunteering for the Book Bus. The charity works in various countries around the globe, encouraging children to go to school and enabling them to expand their education. The Book Bus aims to improve child literacy rates in Malawi & Zambia by providing children with books and the inspiration to read them.

My experience with the Book Bus was one of the most inspirational but also heart breaking, seeing the children in their environment, and getting an insight into a small part of their lives. These children are so eager to learn and read, but due to a lack of funding and resources, they cannot carry out daily activities in school that we take for granted.

Visiting two community schools and one government school, the difference in the learning standard and the facilities these children are able to use is astounding. The children are always so happy, full of smiles, enthusiastic to read and absolutely love the activities the Book Bus provides for them.

Volunteers  join the Book Bus  and work with the local Zambia team in the mornings visiting schools and holiday clubs. In the afternoon, we also visited local libraries to have 1 to 1 reading with the students to give some extra learning and reading time.

Engaging children with great stories

Touching my heart 

Since coming back  to the UK I have stayed in contact with one of the schools, which has given me the opportunity to see what the students are getting up to. I have also been able to fundraise for this amazing charity through using Just Giving, where all the money is donated towards resources and facilities for different activities, such as reading books, arts and craft materials, musical instruments, atlases etc.

Even though this experience was completely different to anything I have experienced before, and it really challenged my comfort zone, it allowed me to come home and really appreciate all the small things in life and all the opportunities that we are lucky to receive. It really does put life into a completely different perspective seeing such positivity in the children of Zambia.
The people in Zambia have really touched my heart, and are some of the happiest and friendliest people I have had the pleasure to meet and spend time with. The two weeks I was there was filled with many different emotions, through getting to know certain students better than others and working with the most amazing and professional team.

I would not change my experience for the world, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute." 

Spend 2 weeks this summer helping children to read. Find out more 

Family volunteering in Zambia

Toby and Sabine are a son and mum team who volunteered with the Book Bus in Livingstone during 2017. 

The daily story time sessions with Toby,  Sabine & children

Aged nine, Toby is one of our youngest volunteers. Mum, Sabine had heard about the Book Bus several years ago, but decided to wait until Toby was a little older and felt ready to participate fully. And that is just what he did. He helped deliver reading sessions in schools, as well as getting involved in the planning of reading sessions along with other volunteers. As a child, Toby could identify with many children on our projects as well as being a reading role model. Toby’s enthusiasm for reading was something he was able to share with the children he met, and he feels one of his achievements was to help make reading more fun for the children. We absolutely agree!

Out of your comfort zone: Meeting elephants on the way to school

Sabine has a professional background in literacy and art, and has delivered music and drama workshops in schools, experience which she put to good use in planning and delivering sessions for the Book Bus. As Sabine pointed out, “Flexibility is essential, especially when helping to run the reading holiday clubs in Zambia  as numbers of children who might turn up is hard to predict. There were occasions when groups of children grew dramatically in size as the session went on, so I really had to think on my feet!. 

“Spending quality time together in such a different environment, and working together, a little out of everyone’s comfort zone, can lead to families learning a lot about each other,”

“I was impressed at how the Book Bus is aiming to make a sustainable difference, so that volunteers’ experience and expertise is shared and used to empower the local team. I was happy to share many  ideas about staff development with the Zambian team,” said Sabine. 

We asked Sabine and Toby what they felt they had got out of the experience, and something they both mentioned was learning about how people live in other parts of the world. 

“It is one thing to read or watch TV about people living in difference countries,” they said “but to physically be there and meet the children, and be part of the Book Bus’s work to help children read is far more powerful. The children were really eager to learn and make the most of their opportunities” they agreed. 

Toby felt strongly that he wanted to help children elsewhere in the world to succeed in life. He particularly enjoyed the one-to-one reading sessions that the Book Bus volunteers ran in the afternoons in local libraries. 

The perfect travel & Book Bus buddies

Volunteering as a family was something both Sabine and Toby wanted to try, though they felt a little apprehensive as to how they would cope. As soon as they arrived at the Book Bus project in Livingstone, they realised it was a great idea, and Sabine watched Toby getting stuck in, coping well with a new environment, and gaining in confidence as he led some of the warm up songs and games that always started the Book Bus reading sessions. They really enjoyed working together, and reckon they are perfect travel buddies. 

“Spending quality time together in such a different environment, and working together, a little out of everyone’s comfort zone, can lead to families learning a lot about each other,” concluded Sabine. 

Will they do the Book Bus again? They both said …”yes!”

Can you share your skills & help engage more children in books? Find out more 

Voices of Africa - Roseby Gadama, Librarian in Malawi

Voices of Africa is a new monthly Book Bus feature, sharing stories from inspiring voices in the various Book Bus communities. Each piece will be brought to you in the storyteller’s own words. We hope you will enjoy the series.

Malawian Librarian, Roseby Gadama

“My name is Roseby Gadama and I am a Librarian at Malawi National Library Service in Blantyre . My first job was in teaching. I was a primary school teacher for some years but I thought of exploring other avenues. I applied at the Malawi National Library Service as the job itself was not very different from what I was doing in teaching. As a teacher I was imparting knowledge and information to the pupils and as a Librarian my main duty is to share books and information.

"I’m Head of the Extra-Mural Service Department in the Southern part of Malawi which is comprised of 13 districts. The department mainly deals with outreach programmes like establishing and organising new libraries, distributing books from different donors to the National Library centres and other beneficiaries in the region, monitoring and assessing libraries and also equipping other people with library basic training.

"I joined the National Library with a little knowledge of Librarianship but wanted to develop this knowledge to become who I am today. My main challenge was the time I went to study for my Degree in Library and Information Studies. It was very challenging because I had to leave my family, husband and two children behind to study in Botswana. We also had to find all the fees for this degree. It wasn’t easy for my husband who had to support me, the family and lots of other financial commitments too. It was worth it though as now I’m qualified and in a stable job.

"The library I work in serves a community of more than 100,000 people. It is the largest public library in Blantyre. The library has 200 seats and everyday every seat is occupied with people studying. Other readers sit on the floor and the ground outside the library as so many people want to use our service. Efforts are being made either to extend the recent library or to erect some chalets outside the library so that readers who could not find space inside could have some shelter but it is proving difficult due to lack of funding.

Encouraging children to read 

"I come from the village in the Eastern Region where many children don’t go to school due to the long walking from the village to school. In fact there’s no school in my village (no kindergarten or primary school or whatsoever) - to have a library or a resource centre would be a luxury.

"Being a teacher and now a librarian, it is my dream to have the children from my local area to have a school nearby and a library. A library would help them in many ways, because that’s where they’d learn more about health, farming, food and nutrition, human rights, academic information, current affairs or just leisure.

Roseby joins fellow librarian Nancy for a Book Bus storytelling session

"I appreciate the work being done by The Book Bus in Malawi by promoting education and reading to the needy children in the remote areas. Indeed it might look like things aren’t changing today when the Book Bus visits the schools and do some storytelling and some games. But in the long term children’s’ lives are changing little by little and at the end of the day they will never be the same.

"My message to the Book Bus? Keep it up THE BOOK BUS!!" J

Rose Gadama works for the National Library Service at Blantyre library.