Westonaria Library promotes economic development

Westonaria Library believes that libraries can and should power social and economic development.

This was reaffirmed by the Public and Community Libraries Interest Group (PACLIG) when all librarians attending a recent session in Johannesburg were encouraged to go beyond just providing access to knowledge and information.

“That as librarians we can no longer just sit behind our counters waiting for patrons to walk through the doors, but that we should actively become involved in the communities we serve,” says Programmes Librarian at Westonaria Library, Righardt le Roux.

One of the NGO’s Righardt had the privilege to work with very closely in the community is the Philani Development Centre situated at Nufcor. Through skills development and social lending support one of the aims of Philani is poverty reduction.

Righardt says that one way of addressing this is through their small non-funded library, bringinging information to the people and community they serve.

As the library stock is very outdated , Christine Papamallis, Centre Coordinator, contacted Righardt with the eye on a possible donation to the Philani Library.

As some books have already been identified by Westonaria for this project the net was cast wider as they aim to establish new partnerships all the time to help people finding better paying jobs who don’t always have the money or resources to improve their own skills.

“By centralising our library programmes on our community, we have found an effective avenue for community input. Through these partnerships economic benefits are put in place and stronger bonds are created between the library and the community,” says Righsrdt.

Over the past few years Westonaria Library established very good ties with the US Consulate General, Johannesburg, and in the light of this, Vusi Kaunda, librarian at the Rosa Parks Library, then also donated nine boxes of books to the Philani Development Centre.

In response to this generous donation Christine Papamallis, Centre Manager at Philani said, “Philani Community Development Programmes would like to thank all stakeholders in the donation of books to our Reading Club.”

“We are very grateful for the good gesture and we hope we will break the barrier and encourage our youth and community at large to read books. We really appreciate the good gesture as this will go a long way in assisting Philani to fight social ills such as illiteracy which permeate our impoverished communities. We will forever be indebted to Westonaria Library for its support to Philani.”

This further resulted in the Youth Outrach Coordinator and IRC Director, Karin Kitching, from the US Consulate, Johannesburg, on Federal Children’s Day to visit Philani in order to create a bigger awareness among local youth as to academic exchange programs between the USA and South Africa.

Karin stated that she was overwhelmed with the work done at Philani and that it is her wish to see as many as possible youth to apply for scholarship awards for the 2014 – 2015 academic year.