Masiphumelele Library: a holistic service to youth and children in the community
Susan M. Alexander · 2015
The joint vision of the Masiphumelele Library and local government, the City of Cape Town, includes supporting education, early childhood learning, gender and HIV/AIDS initiatives, informational and recreational needs. The library provides excellent conventional support for formal and informal education for young people through its reference, study and internet services, considered critical in educational support in both developing and established communities. In addition, their mission is to initiate and develop a range of outreach programmes for young people, drawing them into the library. Each is designed to aid the social development of the individual young person and thereby the social cohesion of the community as a whole, in particular through Computer classes, Homework club and Girls group. The extensive outreach initiative also has strong specialist partnerships which seek to support the development of children and youth. The partnerships include: The NGO IkamvaYouth: www.ikamvayouth.org who extend a service to the youth in the community through mentoring, tutoring, career guidance, workshops and outings. The library identifies with IkamvaYouth’s vision of moving beyond poverty through education thereby countering inequality. The NGO Lalelaproject: www.lalelaproject.org who provide educational arts to youth affected by extreme poverty, to spark creative thinking and awaken the entrepreneurial spirit The NGO Wordworks: www.wordworks.org.za who have a mission to strengthen early literacy and language development and enable children to fulfil their learning potential. In line with the library’s view, Dr Genevieve Hart, Professor from University of the Western Cape in her paper “Moving beyond outreach”, “in 2011… examines the contribution, real and potential, of South African public or community libraries to sustainable development and to social inclusion.” She writes, “The World Bank points to the increasing evidence that social capital is crucial for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable …. In a society like South Africa, only if the institutional culture of public libraries changes to embrace the role of libraries in social inclusion by means of outreach activities will they have a future.” In this paper we present an overview of how the Masiphumelele Library uses outreach to respond and adapt to the needs of children and youth in the community.