Can you imagine a world without BOOKS?
My name is Karlee Taylor, I'm passionate about community-driven projects, love reading, and am the founder of Creative Literacy Laos Inc; a not-for-profit association helping to increase literacy, learning and creativity in rural Laos.
I volunteered in Nakai, a small town in Central Laos, for two years with local government.
Something that immediately struck me when visiting schools in the local area was the absence of BOOKS in the entire region.
Do you remember the first time you were
captivated by a fun or exciting book?
These communities had no such memories because they had never seen a book other than their teacher's text books before.
You can help change this; in fact, we ARE changing the educational landscape of the whole region.
Please share with your networks and other book lovers; if you can't contribute at the moment, maybe they can.
We Promote
A love of literacy, life-long learning and books.
We Support
Lao publishers and link key champions of literacy promotion in Laos together and to sources of funding.
We Improve
The distribution of educational resources and materials to rural areas.
We Provide
Training and mentoring for educators to creatively and actively promote literacy in their communities.
Our Target
We aim to raise USD 10,000. With this target we can:
- Run five workshops across the Nakai Nam Theun National Protected Area
- Provide new book titles from Lao publishers, maintain and assess the small libraries in each of the schools
- Promote literacy, life-long learning and innovative thinking, through fun and engaging activities, games and teaching methods
- Deliver messages about environmental issues; local wildlife and ecology; the links between ecosystem protection and sustainable livelihoods, through fun activities, presentations and games
- Train teachers on how to integrate creative literacy, science and environmental education activities in their curriculum
- Promote scientific research and its importance to build local pride of endemic and threatened wildlife
Through a planned evaluation method, our activities will be directed by the villages that participate in the workshops.
More regular activities will also occur under the direction of the Literacy Promotion Officers; to mentor local teachers and encourage pedagogical discussion.
Your Impact
According to UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report (2011), if all students in low-income countries left primary school with basic reading skills, â171 million people could be lifted out of povertyâ. This is equivalent to a 12 percent drop in world poverty.
Giving people the opportunity to read is an amazing gift; it empowers people to become life-long learners, realise their full potential and contribute to their communities more effectively.
Our Impact So Far
- We have worked with the District Education Office and the Watershed Management and Protection Authority to train over 37 teachers; involve 13 Australian Volunteers; run 9 book parties; and distribute over 6,000 books to 25 schools in the form of small libraries (approximately 200 books per school)
- Designed and undertook questionnaires with teachers to monitor the impact of the literacy project on education and learning in Nakai Nam Theun National Protected Area and presented the report to the District Education Office
- Trained two Literacy Promotion Officers to continue education activities in the 25 schools including mentoring and training teachers and students
- Developed 10 literacy kits for use as an educational resource for the Literacy Promotion Officers
- Designed and Facilitated one 3-day student art workshop for 7 student artists from across Nakai Nam Theun, providing them with the tools and resources to explore different art techniques and styles; and to illustrate a book which will be published in Lao and English language.
- Linked with Lao authors and publishers to ensure libraries were composed of lao language resources, to support lao publishing and book distribution and access training from those passionate in the field
The literacy project has greatly improved educational opportunities for the whole watershed region. The area previously had no access to educational materials and resources. Now all communities are actively engaging and using these materials on a daily basis; teachers have training and motivation to use these resources; students and teachers have access to monthly mentoring and interactive literacy promotion activities.
