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Lawes Road Library is Open |
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Our Libraries
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009 16:49 |
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 It was with great joy that we opened the doors of our third and largest Buk bilong Pikinini library to date, situated at Lawes Road. Lawes road is a busy street close to the city centre of Port Moresby. With the extraordinary support of Steamships Trading Company Limited, we were able to open the new library which is housed in a well appointed ’Ezy House’ container. Our official opening to the children of Konedobu and surrounding settlements was on 5 June 2009. The library was opened by Dame Carol Kidu, Minister for Community Development, Gary Seddon, Business Development Manager for Steamships Trading Company Limited and Anne-Sophie Hermann, President and Founder of Buk bilong Pikinini. The event was attended by our donors and sponsors, a large number of people from the Port Moresby "charity community", the local media and VIPs. After the speeches guests were given a special treat when they were entertained by singer/songwriter Emmanuel Mailau from the Sabama settlement on behalf of Buk bilong Pikinini's newly appointed patron, Christine Anu, who discovered Emmanuel on her recent visit to Port Moresby.(Please see article on our patron Christine Anu and Emmanuel Mailau).  At the end the green ribbon was cut and the guests were invited to visit the library and enjoy a bite of our traditional Buk bilong Pikinini cake with the children. The Lawes Road General Health clinic, together with the two other NGO clinics (Hope Worldwide and Family Health International) is one of Port Moresby's busiest urban treatment centres with hundreds of children attending daily from the nearby settlements. Many children wait around all day for treatment while others walk past on their way to the street markets and schools. The reasoning behind the choice of location is due to the high presence in the number of children.We are proud to report that after 3 months the library is a huge success with around 60-100 children visiting the library on Mondays and Tuesdays and around 30-40 on average the rest of the week.
The library is open weekdays from 8am - 3pm and is staffed by 2-3 full time teachers (depending on the day) who read to the children and introduce them to books and literacy activities for their age group. The days are divided into reading sessions in the morning and literacy/craft activities and play mainly with puzzles around lunch time and do more reading again in the afternoon. |
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Buk bilong Pikinini is an independent charity based in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea which aims to foster children’s enjoyment of books. In PNG there are few functioning libraries outside the school system and most children do not have access to books at all.
The purpose of Buk bilong Pikinini is to focus on early learning (as a key to literacy) through the creation of small libraries in children’s hospitals, orphanages, clinics and later in settlements and village schools. We collect books and seek to obtain funding for our libraries though various channels: fundraising functions, contacting children’s book publishers and authors as well as through corporate sponsorships.
An important factor in sustaining Buk bilong Pikinini libraries is the employment of a teacher - librarian to mind and secure the books, but also to fulfill the intention of this charity, which is namely to introduce the children to books and to read to them.
Our main ongoing expenses are shipping of books from Australia, salary and administration costs. |
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Buk bilong Pikinini was founded in March 2007 by the President, Anne-Sophie Hermann (right) and Vice-President, Anna Mukerjee (left).
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News
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009 00:36 |
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Financial donations and powdered milk continue to trickle in from generous donors.
We would like to thank Vanessa Sutch, a Social Worker in Darwin, for co-ordinating fundraising activities that resulted in a generous financial donation towards purchasing much needed milk and food supplies. |
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Read more...
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Buk bilong Pikinini is proud to have Christine Anu as the charity's patron. Christine visited Papua New Guinea in March 2009 where she toured the Buk bilong Pikinini library at Port Moresby General Hospital, performed in the grounds of the Australian High Commision and assisted with fund raising efforts. |
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