RCLLC 2012 Year End Highlights  The RCLLC has really taken off since our soft launch in July, and it seems almost daily that people in the community and other organizations are coming to us with amazing ideas and talent. So great is the demand and need for what we are doing, people of all ages from Rwinkwavu and beyond are flocking to the Library/Learning Center. The leadership, creativity and relationship building skills of our new Country Director, Matt Melaugh, along with the hard work and dedication of our local library staff is allowing us to answer that need and step up in a big way. Some of our accomplishments:

• In mid October we started our adult Kinyarwanda literacy classes and had over 100 sign-up the first day- some of who are grandparents learning to read and write for the first time!  So humbling to see how earnestly they apply themselves.
• Story time and children’s art activities – each day serve @75 children
• Mother’s literacy and empowerment group
• Sunday School – educational enrichment program with 65 children organized and taught by teachers in the community
• 25 Secondary school girls computer class
• E-reader program – World Reader/Ready for Reading partnership – being pushed into high gear – devices loaded with over 100 titles; International and African in both English and Kinyarwanda as well as learning materials and more to come
• Impromptu dance and singing competitions in the amphitheater
• Movie nights – Charlie Chaplin is a huge hit!
• Game nights
• Community Health Presentations
• Community meetings

Now open 5 days a week we have so much more planned for 2013:

• growing our existing programs and literacy classes to include English and computer training
• Financial management and entrepreneurship training
• Launch Music Program – a Fellow with Music Education degree from McGill University, in Rwinkwavu for 8 months – training local Program Manager and local musicians in curriculum design and program implementation, children/ adult classes basic experiencing of musicality as well as structured guitar, keyboard, piano
• Shooting Touch– a small organization that is a catalyst around youth development through Basket Ball – will be building a BB court on library property, training local coaches and educational support – literacy and computers
• Library staff will be spearheading other activities such as a debate club, poetry group, book groups and soo much more to come for 2013!

  The key to the success of the RCLLC is community buy-in and ownership from staff as well as residents. A group of folks organized a community-wide talent show recently in the amphitheater with music, dance, poetry and comedy sketches. We rented the Reading Room out for our first wedding in November. A local dance troupe practices in the amphitheater each week and all our enrichment programs and other activities on Sunday’s are totally community initiated and run. This is precisely what we hoped would happen! Our strategic partners and the Rwandan government are thrilled at the way so many in the area have embraced the project.   2013 promises to be a big year for us!