Zimbabwe Book Development Council

Summary description:
The Zimbabwe Book Development Council is an independent non - profit
organisation (NGO). Its membership comprises representatives of creators ,
producers, distributors and consumers of books often refered to as the book
chain.The purpose and mandate of ZBDc is firstly, to coordinate the book
industry further its interests and help to increase its capacity; secondly,
to strengthen and promote readership; thirdly to facilitate the formulation
and sustainance of a national book policy.It is to the reader that the ZBDC
is ultimately commited. The commitment is to the provision and access to
books and information for all and to the democratisation of knowledge and
power.
The existing Book Council implementation programme comprises the following projects;
1. National Reading Campaign
For the past seven years, the ZBDC has mounted annual reading campaigns under the auspices of the "National Reading Week" project that is scheduled every third week of the month of March.

The National Reading Week project aims to nurture the love of reading in people and encourages them to be readers for life and to broaden their experience of books.Reading is power.

2. The Book Fund project (1998- 2001)This project is in its final phase of the pilot stage. The Book Fund is a source of money allowing 600 libraries (80% of which are school libraries) to buy locally published, high quality, general books, fiction and non fiction, but not text books.

Beneficiaries of the first phase Book Fund(library communities) were selected on a definite criteria. The 600 libraries had to be marginal areas of Zimbabwe, with proof of a library nucleus of some kind and above all viable adminstrative leadership that is committed to chanel resources towards developing a functional library.

A grant from Danida was for an allocation of (Z$3000 - US$60 per member library each year). This is a very small amount of money by any standards butit means a lot for libraries who never had the laxury of a library budget before. The small budget achieved great things, the greatest of which is the empowerment of librarians to choose books of their own choice from a composite catalogue of local publications.

The second grant from Norad was earmarked for skills development of the library personell in charge of the 600 member libraries. Just as the libraries are a rarity so are basic librarianship skills necessary to implemnt the Book Fund project.

The future Book Fund Project will change structurally but maintaining the same purpose of complementing libraries as cost effective community information centers.

The next phase of the Book Fund project will register a total of 27 members libraries from nine provinces through out the country.It calculates to three libraries per province.The 27 libraries will each have a boosted allocation of Z$100 000. This calculates to 3000% increase in purchasing power. The identified 3 libraries per province will be developed into a network that jointly serve the province through inter library loans. This way the Book Fund will capacity build library developmenton a wider scale.

3.Children's Reading Tent programme
The idea of pitching tents at sites and arranging the inside like children's libraries was prompted by serious lack of libraries for children in Zimbabwe.

The basic idea of the Reading Tent is to gather children together in a relaxed non school environment, and provide them with books, drawing and painting materials, opprtunities for poetry, song and dance, puppetry and other fun reading /learning opportunities.The underlying assumtion is that such experiences of books and reading in this non pressured and enjoyable learningenvironment, will encourage children to love reading and books and this will have positive longterm spinoff effects on their reading habits and their relationship with books.

So far ZBDC has a fleet of five tents in major towns through out the country. The ideal is to have a reading tent in each of the 51 districts of Zimbabwe. The project is cheap to run but requires largish initial capital outlay. The administration of reading tents is best managed at community level. ZBDC has to carry out and sustain training of tent mentors for the project to work.

4. The Children' Book Forum project
The CBF started in 1995 as a programme to produce books for babies, children and teenagers by all concerned. It was recognised that there were hardly any books for this age group, particularly books in local languages and books that were relevant to the lives of these children. The first project within the Children's Book Forum programme was the publishing of six titles for teenagers. They were the results of a workshop for writes and illustrators followed by a story competition held in 1997.

The most urgent need is for books for the under fives. Baby books and preschoolers' books are a rarity in Zimbabwe. ZBDC's desire and dream is to source funds to coordinate the publish books for under fives.