Professor Charlie Schweik recently traveled to Nairobi Kenya to present at the Association for Research on Civil Society in Africa conference [1] on the World Librarians Program he developed along with SPP MPP 2019 graduate Pammy Eisner, other UMass students from across campus, UMass librarian Jeremy Smith, and collaborator Carl Meyer in Malawi. After describing the operational World Librarians program in Malawi — which now supports 20 schools and libraries — to the entire conference audience, Schweik was approached by conference attendees interested in expanding the World Librarians program into other African countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Rwanda.

During this visit, a new World Librarians Kenya Chapter was formed and launched [picture from left and right]: Wachira Warukira, founder and executive of Waruks Productions; UMass Professor Charlie Schweik; Daniel Patrick Muigai of Waruks Productions; Verah Owiti of Sustainable Rural Initiatives (www.srikenya.org); Ezekiel Chemwor of Banda Primary School; and Gladys Nyambura of Kangubiri Girl’s High School.

The World Librarian Program is a socio-technical system that transmits open access digital information to offline schools and libraries in rural areas of Malawi that the teachers, students or library patrons want or request, via Twitter. For more information, see [2,3].

[1] https://www.arnova.org/page/arnova_africa

[2] https://jlsc-pub.org/articles/abstract/10.7710/2162-3309.2249/

[3] http://bookmark.library.umass.edu/node/4