Pathway 1
Books for schools and preschools
Words of Dr Suess on the wall of Nasalanvunmol School library ,
Santo !
So the children can Learn to Read and Read to Learn !
We have facilitated the relocation of recycled children's reading books and resources from schools & libraries in New Zealand to Vanuatu. It’s hoped that these learning resources will aid in improving literacy and numeracy in Vanuatu, while reducing what goes to the landfill in New Zealand.
While planning a return trip to Vanuatu for our Christmas break, a teacher friends offered me some books to take for the school we had helped build on Aore island. I later learnt that this was an ongoing exercise where schools and libraries are regularly weeding out books making room for new stock. I had to do something about this, the seed was planted and Pacific Pathways was born
Our first container with 355 desks & chairs and over 200 banana boxes of books landed in Santo March 2014, we are now in the process of packing our 4th container. To bring the total of desks to Vanuatu to close to 2000 desks & chairs, books and teachers resources, with most of the desks filled with children's reading books and school journals.
Literacy and numeracy skills are a major issue in Vanuatu and are in need of major support.
"We have overlooked strengthening literacry at the community level for the past 30 years. If we want to strengthen the level of literacy and numeracy in Vanuatu, it has to start from the communities (parents) and EECE. This will facilitate reading and writing skills at the primary level." Fabiola Bibi, MoE Statistic Dept, Port Vila, Vanuatu
We have seen this first hand as we visited the schools as we have distributed the resources from our two consignments in 2014.
GOING FORWARD
Libraries for Schools
We will be focusing on libraries for schools over the next 2 years. Working with the Ministry of Education in Vanuatu, the communities and school committees to help them build libraries or at least set up reading rooms so they can enjoy and appreciate the resources that are more available.
Resources Centre, Luganville
To be able to continue we realised we needed to have storage in Luganville. To date we have unloaded the container into the Ministry of Education offices and totally taken over any spare space, this is not ideal. To this end Royal Wolf Containers have generously donated a 40' shipping container to Pacific Pathways so we will now have storage to receive donations going forward.
This will be our first step towards setting up a distribution centre in Luganville. Since our first consignment of books, we have discovered that a number of the smaller schools are now working towards building a library or at least a reading room at the school, so they can also receive the books that are now available. With a central storage space we will now be able manage the distribution of the books, rotate and share the resources. Unlike in New Zealand, Luganville the second largest City in Vanuatu does not have a library and there is no national library service for the schools. We have visited many schools and few have a good or well stocked library.
We have facilitated the relocation of recycled children's reading books and resources from schools & libraries in New Zealand to Vanuatu. It’s hoped that these learning resources will aid in improving literacy and numeracy in Vanuatu, while reducing what goes to the landfill in New Zealand.
While planning a return trip to Vanuatu for our Christmas break, a teacher friends offered me some books to take for the school we had helped build on Aore island. I later learnt that this was an ongoing exercise where schools and libraries are regularly weeding out books making room for new stock. I had to do something about this, the seed was planted and Pacific Pathways was born
Our first container with 355 desks & chairs and over 200 banana boxes of books landed in Santo March 2014, we are now in the process of packing our 4th container. To bring the total of desks to Vanuatu to close to 2000 desks & chairs, books and teachers resources, with most of the desks filled with children's reading books and school journals.
Literacy and numeracy skills are a major issue in Vanuatu and are in need of major support.
"We have overlooked strengthening literacry at the community level for the past 30 years. If we want to strengthen the level of literacy and numeracy in Vanuatu, it has to start from the communities (parents) and EECE. This will facilitate reading and writing skills at the primary level." Fabiola Bibi, MoE Statistic Dept, Port Vila, Vanuatu
We have seen this first hand as we visited the schools as we have distributed the resources from our two consignments in 2014.
GOING FORWARD
Libraries for Schools
We will be focusing on libraries for schools over the next 2 years. Working with the Ministry of Education in Vanuatu, the communities and school committees to help them build libraries or at least set up reading rooms so they can enjoy and appreciate the resources that are more available.
Resources Centre, Luganville
To be able to continue we realised we needed to have storage in Luganville. To date we have unloaded the container into the Ministry of Education offices and totally taken over any spare space, this is not ideal. To this end Royal Wolf Containers have generously donated a 40' shipping container to Pacific Pathways so we will now have storage to receive donations going forward.
This will be our first step towards setting up a distribution centre in Luganville. Since our first consignment of books, we have discovered that a number of the smaller schools are now working towards building a library or at least a reading room at the school, so they can also receive the books that are now available. With a central storage space we will now be able manage the distribution of the books, rotate and share the resources. Unlike in New Zealand, Luganville the second largest City in Vanuatu does not have a library and there is no national library service for the schools. We have visited many schools and few have a good or well stocked library.
The children of Kaiapoi Borough School helping to load the car with schools journals
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School journals donated by schools in Christchurch
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Making the best use of space in the
container we fill each desk with books
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More books for the schools on Santo
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The library at Sara School, inland East Coast Santo is in need of a renovation, shelving and books!
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The library at Nasalanvunmol School South Santo. It took 3 years for the community to build the schools, the books were donated from US and the library was set up by a Peace Corp volunteer
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