Building a library!

On jaaraama !
That's hello and thank you in Pular, the local language of my village, Porékiré. My name's Geoff Delperdang and I serve as a n education volunteer to Peace Corps (Corps de la Paix) in Guinea, teaching physics and mathematics at the high school of Porékiré. As my first school year of teaching has passed, with all the observations I've made and lessons I've learned, I am now working with my community to address the needs that have clearly presented themselves with respect to education.
First and foremost, educational ressources are scarce ; often neither student nor tearcher has access to textbooks and other educational documents – many teachers use thier norebooks from high school or college, I myself use photocopied texts. Clearly this hinders dramatically the capacity of the teacher to teach his or her subject – I don't know if you've ever tried teaching without documentation but it is incredibly challenging – as well as the students' ability to learn independantly, reinforcing what they learned in class as well as practicing with the content. Learning is thus limited to the classroom (and at times it's the education of the teacher's old high school classroom).
Besides not having educational documents (textbooks, etc.), there isn't anything at all to read (with the sole exections of their notebooks in which they have recopied the lesson of the teacher and, if they have the means, the nutritional facts off of packaged goods such as soda or cheese) ! With these conditions, it's no wonder that their French level is very low – French being the official language of Guinea.
This generation is a generation whose parents are often illiterate, under-educated, or never went to school and thus don't know how to read, write, or speak French. This youth is, however, doing all they can to educate themselves – some walk nearly ten kilometers to get to school in the morning and then ten kilometers bqck in the middle of the day under the hot African sun without having lunch and the majority of that 10k is up a mountain ! I know that it sounds exaggerated, but unfortunately, it's not ; it's the reality of several of my students : Thierno Moussa, Alpha Issiaga, Thierno Mamadou Saliou, and the list goes on. They do this because they understand school is their best chance to raise themselves, their families, and their nation out of poverty.
This community believes in this dream and has the motivation and drive to see it through ! Rather than the State, the community built the middle school and, more recently in 2009, the high school. They did this themselves so that their children would have a place to study and learn closer to home, rather than the travel the 25 kilometers or more or live with some other family in the city to go to school. The community is again willing to sacrifice for the development of the education of their children. Together we have developped a plan for a local library to finally give the students and teachers the ressources they so desperately need. The community has committed to constructing and maintaining the library with a focus on efficient fonctioning and a sustainable future. We now humbly call upon your generosity to help us actualize this dream.
S'il vous plaît, aidez-nous !

On jaaraama !

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-675-008