The long-standing partnership between SQR and The Library Project continued last month, as reported by SQR’s Development Coordinator, Li Jiehao.
In the week beginning October 19th, The Library Project’s China Regional Director Jenny Wang and Donation Team Leader Jocelyn Jia, together with two Swedish volunteers — Jennifer and Tarlan — and myself, visited rural village schools around Baoxing County, 130km west of Chengdu.
During this five-day trip, 14 village primary school libraries were established in the following villages:
Baoxing Villages visited by SQR and The Library Project in October 2009.
Download this map to Google Earth.
- Wulong Fengshou Village School
- Shengli Village No.1 School
- Shengli Village No.4 School
- Tuanjie Village School
- Modaoxi Village School
- Dayu Village School
- Heping Village School
- Leile Village School (in Qiaoqi Zangzu Town)
- Kari Village School
- Kari Fengshou Village School
- Jiala Village Qinglong School
- Zegen Village Jiajin School
- Zegen Village School
- Yaoji School
Like a lot of village schools in earthquake zone, these schools were all damaged to some degree, but fortunately none of the students and teachers of these schools was injured during the quake. Well over a year after the quake, the village children have moved back into newly-reinforced classrooms.
These village schools generally comprise one class for each grade from Grade One to Three, each class having around 40 students. Three to four teachers are responsible for the teaching, school management and maintenance. Due to the lack of the educational funding, these schools are usually suffering from extremely poor teaching and general facilities (see the similar conditions of a village school in Qingchuan County).
SQR helped The Library Project to identify the 14 schools listed above, and were there to help the schools to improve both the students’ extracurricular study, as well as teachers’ resources, by bringing them around 300 books and other reading material suitable for each age group with which to establish a lending library.
The members of The Library Project also trained the teachers in some basic librarian skills, and explained how the provided books could be best used in daily education. Jenny Wang said that these suggestions definitely help schools to maintain the usage of the books themselves and to make the most of every single donation.
As well as immediately seeing the benefits that The Library Project brings to these village schools, I was able to use the skills I learned from observing Jenny and the team when I visited Yanyan Village School a few weeks later.
Well done to Jenny, Jocelyn, Jennifer, Tarlan and The Library Project as a whole for keeping up the good work. We look forward to working with you again in the near future.
