At the 2007 SLA Conference, Jane Kinney Meyers was presented with the Dow Jones Leadership Award for founding and running the Lubuto Library Project.  

See the SLA video of Jane's work 

After a standing ovation for Jane at the SLA Awards, many members wanted to know:

How Can I Help?

There are many avenues for involvement in 4 areas:

  • Fundraising - Help Lubuto build a sustainable, long-term funding base;
  • Communication- Help LLP publicize Lubuto Libraries;
  • Volunteering– Donate your time and talents directly to help the children LLP serves;
  • Research– Lubuto Libraries afford critical and exciting research opportunities.

FUNDRAISING: Help the Lubuto Library Project grow and achieve a stable, long-term financial footing by broadening our funding base – so that we may become an employer of special librarians interested in our groundbreaking work in Africa. Ways to help us do this include:

  • Donate to the Lubuto Project, by credit card through www.Lubuto.org, or make sure every penny you donate helps us build Lubuto Libraries by sending a check payable to “Lubuto Library Project” to: 5505 Connecticut Avenue, NW, #368, Washington, DC20015-2601.No donation is too small to help us build our libraries! Approximately ¾ of the financing of our first library came from librarians and other book/information professionals.
  • Corporate/foundation giving: Request that your employer contribute to or otherwise support the Lubuto Project. Corporations, foundations and other organizations to which you belong may be able to furnish assistance through CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), grant or employee matching fund programs.
  • Combined Federal Campaign: The Lubuto Library Project is participating in the 2007 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), listed with the Aid for Africa Federation. Our CFC number is 12370. If you work in a US military or other government agency, please spread the word and encourage CFC donations to Lubuto! One way to do this is to let us know of any CFC fairs in your agency, or to represent Lubuto yourself or invite someone from Lubuto to speak at your agency during the campaign.
  • Email and listserv appeals, or other web-based fundraising efforts, are great ways to reach out to your organization’s staff—as well as to your personal and professional networks. We are happy to send logos, content or any other materials you may need to mount an effective appeal. In the US, 75% of philanthropic giving is personal giving, so extending Lubuto’s personal giving base is very important.
  • Mobilize in-kind donations of supplies and services (e.g., books, bookends, book trucks, labels, label protectors, printing, etc.).
  • Book drives in your organization, professional association or community group or school can work toward building excellent collections for the children we serve. We will provide fliers with detailed information on the types of books that are needed. Requesting cash donations (e.g., a book and $5) along with donated books is even more helpful, supporting construction of our beautiful libraries that make the books available to the street children, but also give them a safe haven in their rough lives.
  • Organize a fundraising event in your home, school, office or community. Events can be something as simple as a pot-luck picnic or dinner in your home. Further, you might mobilize groups to conduct a raffle or silent auction, a bowling tournament, a concert or other performance, perhaps a showing and discussion of the Academy Award-winning South African film, Tsotsi. The efforts of student groups and other friends of Lubuto in these ways have really made a difference!
  • Frequent flier miles can help us oversee and move our program forward much more effectively. We are investigating ways to work directly with airlines’ frequent flier programs to allow people to donate miles, perhaps through their employers’ travel offices. We particularly need miles with members of the OneWorld Alliance (American Airlines, British Airways, Canadian Airlines), SkyTeam (AirFrance, Continental, Delta, KLM, and Northwest), Star Alliance (Air Canada, Lufthansa, South African Airways, United Airlines, US Airways) and Virgin Atlantic.
  • Are you or someone you know getting married? Wedding guests can donate to Lubuto through wedding registries on the following websites:
  • Request donations to Lubuto in lieu of gifts for other occasions, too. A Canadian librarian friend of Lubuto asked attendees at her recent retirement celebration to give to Lubuto and was delighted at their generous tribute to her. We send an acknowledgement card to people or the family of people in whose honor or memory a donation is made. Major gifts can be permanently recognized in our library buildings.
  • More: Please contact us for materials to support fundraising, such as the 10-minute film, Kids Just Like You, narrated by Julian Bond. Though the film was originally produced for use in high schools, it gives a good introduction to the Project and the children it serves. We will also happily supply brochures, articles about the Project, book donation guidelines, our Annual Report, building design data and other information. We will also furnish the Dow Jones Leadership Award film that SLA produced for the Conference and the award press release when they are available.

COMMUNICATION: Please help us publicize Lubuto Libraries!

  • News/media organizations: Help us convey our story to the public. The Lubuto Project is one of special librarianship that can capture the interest and imagination of the general population and bring recognition to our profession in a new way – and help bring more supporters to Lubuto. Many aspects of our work would be of interest to different readers:
    • The critical role that our libraries will play in providing a bridge connecting the child alone in the world with society and people who care is new evidence of the power and importance of libraries.
    • Our extraordinary architecture uses sustainable technologies to create profound and enriching spaces to reconnect children with their traditions by building indigenously-designed structures more grand and impressive than their modern, western surroundings.
    • Lubuto Libraries can play a vital role in preventing young adults from turning to crime and terrorism, as US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke and Senator Russ Feingold recognized on their 1999 visit to the Fountain of Hope in Lusaka, Zambia.
    • Our work in concert with the International Board on Books for Young People to establish a Zambian Board on Books for Young People to bring traditional stories back into print in local languages is exemplary and aims to bring about a profound cultural change in Zambia.
    • The story of how adults reading to and teaching street children has made a dramatic difference in their lives, and how those children have returned from getting an education to help other street kids, is compelling.
    • The event celebrating the opening of the first Lubuto Library in Zambia in September 2007 will be a joyful and positive story from Africa, about a new way to help children affected by HIV/AIDS that will benefit society at large. Zambia’s first president, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, will lead this change by reading an excellent children’s book, accompanied by traditional storytelling, drama and musical performances. Please help us communicate images and impressions of this moving African event to the rest of the world!
  • Website links and assistance with development of the Lubuto.org site: Michelle Campbell, of the US NOAA Library, is redesigning our website. Meanwhile, creating links to our site from your library’s/organization’s will help us to spread the word.
  • Help Lubuto find “celebrity” spokespersons/advocates to assist us in our mission to raise awareness of the affect of HIV/AIDS on young people in Africa and bring to a wider audience the singular and direct role we play. A fundraiser appearance or mention of LLP can go a long way.
  • Suggest radio or TV interviews or other programming about the Lubuto Project to producers—such as the appearance Jane Meyers and Lubuto volunteer Debbie Chungu on Washington, DC, NPR affiliate WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show. (You can listen to this show by following the link at the top of the Lubuto homepage.)

VOLUNTEERING: The Lubuto Project has been launched by the hard work of dozens of top-notch professionals on a volunteer basis. Many people find it most satisfying to give their time and talents directly to help the children we serve. Some volunteer opportunities are focused in the Washington, DC, area or in Zambia, but many things that provide critical support to our mission can be done from your home and other locations.

  • US volunteers:
  • Fundraising (in ways outlined above or helping with events in Washington, DC, and elsewhere);
  • Accounting and bookkeeping;
  • Volunteer coordination;
  • Email and mailing list management;
  • Acquisitions/publishers outreach;
  • Support to Lubuto’s Webmaster;
  • Schools program – we ESPECIALLY need help with this: to mobilize school groups, and student volunteers in community service and service learning programs, and to expand and coordinate a roster of adult volunteers to work with the students in classifying and processing books, etc.;
  • Marketing/media relations/content creation and coordination.
  • Volunteers in Zambia
  • Peace Corps: We have requested a Peace Corps volunteer to work with our firstLibrary in Lusaka, Zambia, and hope to have more working with future libraries. The Peace Corps no longer has “librarian” positions, but is able to specify skills needed.
  • We are also seeking to interest volunteers already posted to Lusaka in working with vulnerable children through our Libraries as a secondary activity.
  • Encore! Service Corps International (formerly Peace Corps Encore) and the Crisis Corps are possible avenues for returned Peace Corps volunteers to become involved. If you are interested in working with Lubuto Libraries as an Encore! volunteer, please write to lubuto@encoreservicecorps.org for the assignment description.
  • LearnServe Zambia is a new initiative by Washington, DC’s Center for International Education, sending a group of teachers and students from Washington, DC-area public, private and charter schools to Zambia in June 2007. The group will assist in training and other activities with the first Lubuto Library at the Fountain of Hope in Lusaka, and will return in future years to continue their work with children affected by HIV/AIDS in Lubuto Libraries in Zambia.
  • Fulbright Scholar and Senior Specialist programs are an important avenue for research and academic study in library science, architecture, education, psychology and other disciplines made possible by Lubuto Libraries and the community of vulnerable children brought together by these new institutions. Please contact us if you are interested in pursuing this possibility.
  • We are open to other volunteer groups, and if you would like to work with Lubuto Libraries and could identify a group that would sponsor or facilitate your work in Zambia we would be happy to work with you to develop a program of work and other logistics.

Create Lubuto Library book collections in your area! This entails a major, ongoing commitment but is a way to experience the great satisfaction of direct service to African street kids, orphans and other vulnerable children. This requires a facility (like the church basement we have used in our DC operations) and assembling a team who can mobilize student and adult volunteers to meet regularly to select, classify and process books. Please contact Jane if you and your colleagues would like to get involved in this direct and satisfying way.

RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES:

The i-School at Drexel University is taking the lead in focusing on information professional support to the Lubuto Project. We hope to engage students and faculty in this dynamic department in library, communications and information science and services research to guide future directions and systems of the Lubuto Library Project. We welcome other researchers and departments to conduct investigations into library/information services, public health, international and community-based development, and community architecture issues that will further inform our future directions.For example:

  • Research is especially needed to identify clearly the information needs of our target population. The Project and its services have been designed cooperatively by information professionals, based on extensive experience with vulnerable children in Africa and on data collected by public health workers, but research contributions are needed from the perspectives and disciplines of library and information scientists.
  • Public health professionals can find in Lubuto Libraries an institutional means of reaching the most vulnerable, out-of-school children, both for research and as a means of disseminating critical health information.
  • Investigation of the new role that Lubuto Libraries can and will play in African societies would be a valuable contribution to international development literature.


WE WELCOME YOUR SUPPORT – AND NEED YOUR HELP

www.lubuto.org