Development Projects
Besides fostering literacy in the community, the Kitengesa Community Library has provided a stimulus for other development projects.
• Forestry for African Development Association (FADA). Leigh Fox initiated this project after his visit in 2005, and his friend Jake Solway financed it. FADA maintains a tree nursery at the library and hires school boys to work on tree planting projects in the sub-county. FADA’s team also helps to maintain the library’s own compound.
• Lwannunda Women’s Group. With the help of a small amount of capital raised by Shelley Jones, the Women’s Group (which had begun as an adult literacy class in the library) formed itself as a micro-finance institution, lending its members funds for various small income generating projects. Several of them have invested in an “exotic” (i.e. Frisian) cow, which produces much more milk than a local cow would.
• Afri-Pads (www.afripads.com). One of the findings of Shelley Jones’ research was that village girls often miss school and may drop out altogether because of difficulties with handling their menstrual periods. A later Canadian visitor to Kitengesa, Carrie-Jane Williams, introduced disposable sanitary pads to the girls at the school, and the pads were so popular that two more volunteers, Pauls Grinvalds and Sophia Klumpp, decided to develop a locally made product. In October 2009 they were ready to expand production, and since the old library building was vacant by then, they moved in and converted it into a workshop. Twenty local girls are now working there, developing skills as tailors and earning a steady income.
• Telephone charging. Many people in Kitengesa have mobile phones, but few have access to electricity for charging them. With its solar electricity, the library is able to offer this service. The fee for charging a phone is 500 Uganda shillings (about 30 cents). The resulting revenue is about 30,000 shillings per month, enough to keep the library in notepaper and to provide refreshments for the children when they come for a Children’s Day.
• The library as a community center. The new library building includes three rooms: one for books and reading, one for computers (though we still have to furnish this one and get more computers), and a third that is to be a community hall. This room, at the beginning of 2010, still needs a floor, doors, and windows, but when it is finished it will provide a space for community activities. We hope to purchase a hundred-seater tent so that the tent and the hall together can be rented out for functions such as weddings. In this way the library will generate its own income.
