Imaginations Unleashed...The Magadini Village Library is Open!
Tom Apson, the Honorable District Commissioner of Siha, was one of the guests speakers at the grand opening of the Magadini Village Library.
On February 25th, in true Tanzanian fashion with ceremony and fanfare, Ubora’s second village public library was dedicated for the people of Magadini. Students from nearby schools joined in the celebration. Music played as local government dignitaries arrived including the Honorable Tom Apson, District Commissioner of Siha.
The speeches were heartwarming and full of gratitude. The tour of the library was inspiring and exciting. The food was plentiful and everyone rejoiced over this new resource which will serve three primary schools and two secondary schools. But before all of the festivities could take place there were countless hours of phone calls, emails, book selection, box packing, pallet loading, and praying. The Ubora family rallied with necessary funding to pay for some of the books, along with transportation, taxes and fees to Tanzania.
Wendy Williams, one of Ubora’s volunteer teacher mentors, led the charge to get this container from Savannah, Georgia to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She organized efforts for book selection with Books4Cause and other partners. She coordinated volunteers to pack pallets at Books for Africa. Then she traveled to Tanzania and, alongside Mary Ann Taylor, one of our partners in Tanzania, and SHEFO interns and volunteers, they unpacked the container and oversaw a team of people to organize and stock the shelves of the beautiful new library.
In addition to books, the container held precious resources and manipulatives for science and math, as well as medical textbooks. In God’s providence and plan, there were so many learning tools and books that we were able to share with other schools and even help the Siha District Hospital stock their first ever medical library!
Thank you to Wendy, Mary Ann, Books for Africa, Books4Cause, the SHEFO staff and interns and to all of you who gave so generously to make it possible for Magadini to dream!
“The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream…” – Eric Ripert
Reading Transforms Lives…A few scenes from Magadini
