“I am the founder and director of EISERVI – Education Information Services International – in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé.  

In Cameroon we have both French and English systems of education and 250 indigenous languages. Many children in Cameroon schools today can therefore speak in French, English and their local languages. But many parents have challenges acquiring books in all three languages for their children to attend school. It is therefore common to find many children in schools without textbooks.   

The EISERVI library and other libraries supported by Book Aid International therefore come in to provide the necessary books so that the children can do their assignments after school.

Our library has over 9,000 good quality books in all domains and a children’s section made up of beautiful, colourful, current and attractive books all donated by Book Aid International.

But many people do not know about our library. We need to continue sensitization in schools and the community on this. This is a continuous and vital assignment for us in our communities.    

Find out more about how we support libraries

On International Literacy Day the theme was ‘Promoting Multilingual Education: Literacy for Mutual Understanding and Peace.” Our programme of activities were as follows: Read aloud, read and tell a story, spelling bee, word search, fashion parade, traditional dances, word building and activities to promote the mother tongue.    

We were joined by representatives from local publishers, the government and schools, including many pupils who were given the opportunity to go round the library. The dignitaries and teachers were pleased with the conducive learning environment and were very much happy with the varieties of interesting books they saw and research materials in different fields of study.  

On the other hand, the children were amazed at a very attractive and beautiful Children’s Corner with colourful and interesting story books, poems, games and activities books. One of the children told me,

‘’I will tell my parents to come and register me in the library – the books are so interesting!’’ 

_{^{Adults and children taking part in reading promotion events}}

But the event was much more than just a library tour! All the participating schools took part in a march, and the dancing styles and the rhythm of the music by the children pulled a great crowd to the event. We also had a presentation in mother tongue, traditional dance and and a fashion parade that also attracted a lot of people. A village mother who is a retired teacher who came to speak to the children on the importance of mother tongue and the interesting things they will learn by knowing and speaking their local languages.  

The celebration of this event in the community brought awareness to the teachers, pupils and the community at large about the importance of reading and the use of libraries.

Since the event, we have had an increase in the number of people and parents coming to our library to enrol their children and even wanting the librarian to work with their children.   

We will be happy to run the reading promotion event in our community in particular and our country in general again. There are still a lot of schools which are facing challenges in reading and we hope to reach out to them.  

We thank Book Aid International for their continuous support as we walk this journey of reading in our communities.

All photos (c) EISERVI