Literacy

On 22 July 09, the Manzini Rotaract Club, Inkhanyeti & St Theresa’s Interact clubs turned up in full force at 9am to sort books into categories, stamp and re-box them. These books were donated to Manzini Rotary Club. There were over 40 youth present!
All mixed up and loose books were sorted, stamped & packed. The remainder of the books were already sorted into categories in their boxes and were left in the container. We only managed to stamp about a fifth of the books and also managed to create an isle down the centre of the container (but only half way). So there is now access to the middle of the container books.

The sheer number of books and size of the container is so large that there was no way we could have been able to create an isle the entire length of the container and our stamp ran out of ink about a 5th of the way through stamping! Our estimation of how many books there are, based
on an average number per square metre is between 10 – 20 thousand books.

The two schools arrived at the distribution at 4pm. The head master & head mistress of Evening Bearing & Songweni Primary schools, respectively, were present from Nhlangano. We had sorted out 3 boxes of primary school books for each of them (text books, novels etc) and asked them to take a walk through the container to choose some boxes for themselves. As you can see from the pictures attached they went away with 2 bakkies full (approx. 300 – 400 books each) and were extremely happy & grateful. They are in the process of setting up libraries in their schools (with the help of Cleo Bonnie, the Reading ambassador of Malawi / “Africa”) and these books are to go in the libraries for maximum use by all students.

Cleo Bonnie will be sending the pictures & an article to the papers to print, not sure which day, so look out for it.

As per Rtn Alma, there will be another distribution for another 4 - 5 schools and the National Library soon.

Yours In Rotary

PP Cassandra Bastock
Treasurer
Rotary Club of Manzini