We negotiate private and public sector partnerships in tandem through our regional office in Zambia and the U.S. headquarters, as well as with each individual library Lubuto creates. Major partnerships finance the establishment of libraries and the operations of the Lubuto organization, primarily focusing on capacity building and information product development.
Lubuto Library Partners received a “Communities for Change” grant from ViiV Healthcare’s Positive Action for Girls and Women Fund that will allow Lubuto’s Mumuni Nabukuyu Library to serve as a platform to combat early marriage in the surrounding communities. Zambia has one of the highest rates of child marriage in Africa, with 31% of girls under the age of 18 already married and a median first marriage age of 18 for women generally. Early marriage and early pregnancy and childbirth are most common in rural areas and among girls living in poverty. Over the next two years, we plan to reach at least 50 traditional leaders, 200 teenaged girls and 200 parents/caregivers with opportunities and resources to prevent early/forced marriage.
Lubuto was awarded a DREAMS Innovation Challenge grant in 2016 to support a two-year project using libraries as a platform to keep adolescent girls in secondary school and AIDS-free. Girls and young women account for 71% of new HIV infections among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 1,000 new infections a day. In response to this, DREAMS was launched in 2014 to help girls develop into Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe women.
Lubuto’s DREAMS programs have seen meaningful results. In two years, 1,174 boys and girls graduated from mentoring programs, 180 peer mentors were trained to inspire others and give back to their communities and 13 HIV testing and counseling sessions resulted in an unprecedented 100% referral completion rate. Girls met with female parliamentarians, doctors and coders and learned that anything is possible for them.
Lubuto Library Partners were awarded three grants from USAID’s American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) program to construct new libraries and furnish them with complete library collections and innovative technology.
The first grant, in 2014, supported the construction of the the Mthunzi Library in Lusaka West with co-financing from our generous donor Judie Feedham. The second grant is supports the construction of the Choma Library in Zambia's Southern Province, slated to open in 2019. The third grant, from FY 2017, received approval in 2018 and will support the Comboni Library south of downtown Lusaka. Construction for the Comboni Library will begin in 2019.
ASHA's awards go to organizations that represent the excellence and leadership of American institutions, so we are quite honored by this tribute to the quality of our work.
After receiving an initial grant from the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA) in 2012 to evaluate the impact of our library model, we were awarded a new grant in 2013, jointly funded by UK-based charity Comic Relief and OSISA, for a project entitled "Improving access to quality education in Zambia through the Lubuto Library Model." Over three years, this support enabled us to build on our existing programs and promote our innovative model to stakeholders in Zambia and around the world. Under this project, we were also able to establish the first rural Lubuto library, the Mumuni Library in Zambia's Southern Province.
We were one of 32 organizations chosen worldwide—out of more than 450 applications—to receive an All Children Reading (ACR) Grand Challenge for Development grant in 2012. The ACR Partnership–USAID, World Vision and AusAID–sought solutions to improve reading skills for children in the early grades to reach their goal of getting 100 million children reading by 2015. In serving Zambia’s marginalized young people, Lubuto identified very low literacy levels among the population it serves. Experts had established that children need to learn to read first in their mother tongue. The ACR award provided the opportunity for Lubuto, with the support of World Vision, to create more than 100 computer-based reading lessons for each of seven local Zambian languages. The lessons follow the new national reading curriculum and thus extend learning beyond the classroom, to computers and mobile devices used anywhere.
Dow Jones and Company and its employees very generously provided Lubuto with a corporate gift to cover construction costs of Ngwerere Library in 2010. Dow Jones employee book donations and a foundation grant together funded the collection and staff training for the new library as well. In a congratulatory letter to the children served by Ngwerere Library, Dow Jones' CEO stated that he wanted the library to "be a resource for your curiosity and your dreams. We want the words we now share to be a starting point on a journey of knowledge and learning that carries you forward in your lives."
