So Many Books!
Each shipping container library that is placed in rural Kenya can house up to 30,000 books. That’s a lot of books! So, where does KanKen get books to fill the library pods, and what kind of books do we look for?
Book Sources
Clearly, it is cost prohibitive to fund all new books for each container library. As a result, we utilize a combination of the following sources:
Individuals
People who hear about the need for books often collect them from their friends and neighbors to donate. Others collect books as a hobby and share them with us. But the more people who hear about what we do, the more individual book sources we have.
Libraries
Whether public, school or church libraries, we rely heavily on them to provide us with books that they may be purging or replacing. We are coordinating an effort to contact Kansas libraries for this purpose; however, if you have a local or school library, feel free to contact them to see if they will give you the books they are getting rid of. Then contact us to coordinate collection.
Types of Books
The library hosts a wide range of educational resources, reading helps, biographical books, fictional works, and spiritual resources.
Varied Reading Levels
While we concentrate heavily on elementary reading materials, we generally serve students up through grade 8. Teachers and adults in the community also make use of the library. So, while our greatest need is for early reading levels, books at all levels are welcome.
Dictionaries
All students in Kenya learn English in the government schools. However, many are in the early stages of reading in general, and reading English is a new challenge. Providing English to Swahili and Swahili to English dictionaries helps students who are navigating two languages to learn new vocabulary.
Books in English and Swahili
Because there are students at different reading levels, reading success is important. While the majority of the library books are in English, having books in both English and Swahili allows students to get comfortable reading in both languages and further develop a culture of reading.
Varied Subjects
Teachers at the local schools are finding the library to be a wonderful supplement to their textbooks because students can go to the library to do extended reading on varied topics. Students also love reading these books on their own. So, books on science, math, geography, history, etc. at different reading levels are perfect for donating.
Sound Content
One of the biggest tasks we have at KanKen is reviewing every book that is donated before it is catalogued, labeled and shipped. We scan books for sound Biblical teaching (if relevant), inappropriate content, and any references to macro-evolution, in particular. We also ensure there are no culturally inappropriate references or unsuitable war/violence related content.