During the summer of 2022, Andrea Trudeau taught and learned at JAMS for three weeks as part of a Northern Illinois University group funded by a Fulbright-Hayes grant. Her experience inspired her to form a non-profit to expand school libraries around the world – starting at JAMS!

A middle school library information specialist from Illinois, Andrea and her NIU colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students in education, taught middle school and high school students for six weeks in rural Tanzania and Kenya.

When Andrea returned from Africa, she saw herself as a different person. The immense poverty she witnessed “changed me as a human,” she said. She realized how much needed to be done and came home believing that she could contribute in the future. She discussed her experiences with fellow librarians Tom Bober, an elementary school library coordinator in Clayton, MO, and Amanda Jones, a school librarian in Louisiana. The trio began planning ways to use their networks and their skills to improve education in African schools.

The three librarians started Librarians Building Libraries, a nonprofit organization focused on “collaboration with library communities worldwide, providing resources, training, and innovative solutions that promote literacy and provide access for all.”

Plans for JAMS and Its Library

The organization will launch its activities at Jane Adeny Memorial School for Girls (JAMS) in rural western Kenya, where Trudeau taught on the NIU trip in 2022. They will begin by consulting Dr. Terea Wasonga, the Northern Illinois University professor who started JAMS, a high school for girls, and still oversees it.

JAMS has a library with 10,000 books, but it is not catalogued or organized. The librarians will start with these familiar tasks and then work to expand the collection. Trudeau observed that most of the titles in the current collection were donated from the United States and center on white characters. Librarians Building Libraries will add books with Black characters, but will also seek books of fiction and non-fiction in Swahili and from native writers.

Trudeau also observed that bookstores in East African primarily carry textbooks and not much literature, especially not literature for children. Librarians Building Libraries will focus on creating a love of literature and story in schools.

Another factor in their planning has been how to make sure the library operates in an organized fashion after they are gone. At first, they intended to train staff, but Teresa Wasonga redirected them. She recommended that they teach library management to the students, who will carry it on. While working at JAMS, Trudeau had noted the pride students exhibited about working in the library. She is confident that Wasonga’s strategy will work.

Expanding the Library’s Collection Means Fund-raising

To increase the books in JAMS library, the three librarians and their new non-profit must attract support. They set up a donation page on their website at https://sites.google.com/view/buildinglibraries/donate. Their network of librarians responded energetically to the announcement. Next steps include contacting publishers and seeking corporate sponsors. Their first pledged sponsor is Demco, which will provide library supplies and equipment at JAMS.

The next challenges are logistical and could also benefit from individual and corporate sponsors. The new books, book ends, printers, easels, and other supplies will need to be shipped to Kenya by March in order to be in place when Trudeau, Bober, and Jones arrive for a three-week visit next summer.

Inspiring a Love of Story

Teaching story-telling and a love of reading are essential parts of the librarians’ mission. Andrea Trudeau’s commitment to teaching students to love a story comes from her experience at JAMS in 2022. The NIU visitors engaged JAMS students in writing autobiographies. JAMS students generally focus on learning what they need to know in order to do well on the high-stakes Kenyan national exams. They had no opportunities to write their own stories, a creative activity beyond the scope of national exams.

Using journals provided to them by the visitors, JAMS students wrote about their lives so far. Some wrote in prose and some in poetry. “The things they came up with were just profoundly beautiful,” Trudeau commented

Building Long-Term Relationships at JAMS

The principals in Librarians Building Libraries are looking forward to spending three weeks at JAMS in summer 2025, guiding the development of the JAMS library. They intend to build relationships with JAMS teachers and students that will enable them to follow up on how their visit impacted the school. They see building relationships as an intangible skill that involves asking the right questions, listening thoughtfully to answers, and responding in ways that add value for everyone. Their experience at JAMS will help to establish a model for building libraries in other parts of the world.