Lubuto Launches Zambian Language Reading Project with eIFL.net Funding

The Lubuto Library Project was one of 12 groups chosen from several hundred applicants worldwide to be awarded a grant from the eIFL.net Public Library Innovation Initiative, for which eifl.net received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to encourage innovation with information technology in public libraries.  Lubuto's project addresses the critical need that the educational system cannot meet for a means to teach all Zambian children to read in their original language.  Lubuto libraries reach out-of-school children and can help them toward reading by read-aloud and storytelling programs, but tools for reading teaching in Zambian languages are not available.  Youth who have been using the One Laptop Per Child XO laptops in Lubuto libraries and experienced Zambian reading teachers were trained in the OLPC application Etoys and are creating early reading programs in Zambian languages.  The project creators are using six of the new XO 1.5 laptops granted to Lubuto by the OLPC Foundation.  The programs will then be made available on laptops in the libraries and via the Lubuto.org website to inspire the creation of similar programs in other African countries and languages.

Lubuto’s partners in designing and implementing this project are:

- Zambia Ministry of Education, including University of Zambia liaison and Ngwerere School and the Ngwerere Lubuto Library

- Fountain of Hope Lubuto Library, Kamwala, Lusaka

- Mike Lee of Sugar Labs, Washington DC, USA and One Laptop Per Child organization, Boston, MA, USA

- Kathleen Harness, EtoysIllinois.org in the Office for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA

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