My name is Chirikure Chirikure. I am a writer and performance poet, who also occasionally does some acting for theatre and television. I am also the founder and director of LitFest Harare, a literature festival that also runs programmes that promote literature and mentor younger writers. I live and work in Harare, Zimbabwe, but I was born and raised in the Gutu district of the Masvingo Province, where the Nemashakwe Community Library is based. 

The library started operating in 2021 with the support of the African Publishers Innovation Fund of the International Publishers Association. They helped us set up the library and ship the initial batch of books that my family had mobilised in the United Kingdom. We basically converted part of our family’s rural shop into the community library. 

A number of factors prompted me to start the library. The area in which the library is situated is generally poorly resourced and is highly vulnerable to droughts. The surrounding schools have few resources which adversely affects the performance of the students. Most school leavers and young adults in the communities have nominal incomes from their subsistence farming. Most of them struggle to get basic information to empower and enrich their mental capacity. I felt that a library would go a long way to mitigating these challenges. 

The library is a community facility, catering for the needs of everyone in the area. The users range from primary and secondary school students to school leavers, tertiary education students, teachers, nurses and the general public. We try our best to provide books that cover this broad range of users and as well as educational books, we have leisure and special interest materials too. 

Our basic mission is to provide the community with access to knowledge and information at a centre which is not far from their homes. We strive to provide students with a broader range of reading materials then just standard textbooks. One specific and major challenge that the community faces is the limited number of educational books in the schools and lack of extra reading materials for the students. We now have an average of 60 students borrowing books from the library every week, which is an indicator of how the library is filling that critical gap.  

We also encourage and prioritise girls to utilise the resource centre as they are generally marginalised as regards access to knowledge and information.

We have had one young lady who has come back to thank us for the difference that the books made to her studies while she was preparing for her final exams at a teacher’s college. She passed with high grades and is now practising as a teacher. We are positive that, with time, we will see more concrete cases of positive changes made possible by the books.

Book Aid International has been supporting us since 2022 and has so far shipped to us a total of 4,245 books in two consignments. For a library to meet its objectives and make an impact, it has to get the support of its users. The concept of a library was generally new in our community. The amount and quality of the books that we received from Book Aid International helped us to get more people appreciate the concept of a library. That aspect alone is a huge milestone. 

The support of Book Aid International has not only alleviated the lack of books in our community for those who needed them but has also brought in a new culture to the majority of the community, a reading culture. We are witnessing a gradual increase in the number of people borrowing books, not only for educational purposes but also for personal development and entertainment. The library is set to be a fountain that will water a broad range of futures. 

Read more on how we select which books to send

We have also had opportunities to meet and share ideas with Book Aid International staff at the Sharjah, Bologna and Frankfurt Book Fairs. Book Aid International has helped us to connect with other libraries, which helps immensely in knowledge sharing and they also share a lot of valuable information through their newsletters and reports. 

I very much think and believe that books give people power.

Power is the ability/capacity to do something or act in a particular way. Some people may have the ability and capacity to do something, but it may be latent. The knowledge and information that is stored in books can stimulate that ability and capacity, as well as help it to develop fully.  

The broader vision and dream [for the library] is to help build a community that can uplift its livelihood by virtue of making informed decisions on matters of life. Books are a valuable source of knowledge and information and can make a difference in all aspects of life.