The Volunteer of the Month is Sean Daglous Namenda who is the son of Elliot Ngosa, Lubuto’s Program Manager. Sean has helped us so much. Working with Nzala, he entered data for our Templeton program evaluating the impact of traditional storytelling on improving sexual and reproductive health outcomes. He has a keen interest in information technology and computer science—and is preparing to go to the University of Lusaka to study IT. Sean says his experience with Lubuto has been tremendously enriching and he hopes to come back and volunteer more. We are so grateful for all his efforts and can’t wait to welcome him back to the Lubuto team!

The Volunteer of the Month is Veronica Mwansa Nkamba. Mwansa learned about Lubuto through a colleague who volunteered at the Fountain of Hope Centre. She says her experience with Lubuto was exciting because she learned new things including cataloging and shelving—and she was amazed by the quality and selection of books in Lubuto library collections. Mwansa’s children loved the books she shared with them from the collection. She is eager to start volunteering for Lubuto again in the near future, and we will be thrilled to have her back on the team again!

Our Volunteer of the Month is the enthusiastic and talented Ashley Lanfer—Lubuto’s newest volunteer in Zambia, whose husband is teaching communications at the University of Zambia as a Fulbright Scholar, and whose three children love libraries as much as she does. So, they found Lubuto, and are happy for the opportunities our libraries offer for them all to engage directly with Zambian youth. To keep up with Zambian youth and their needs, we have been laying out plans at Lubuto libraries for new programs in information and digital literacy and caring for the environment. Ashley and her family have interests in both of these initiatives—and we hope we will have exciting news to share about these programs soon.

Ashley is a Partner at Wellspring Consulting and is an expert in strategic planning, impact assessment, communications and systems thinking. She is currently on sabbatical while in Zambia. Ashley holds an MESc from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a BA in English and Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College.

One way Lubuto's staff continues to serve children and their families during COVID is by typing out stories as text messages and sending them to caregivers to read to their children. Anastasia, an avid library user who is currently in the Lubuto Scholarship Program, has been instrumental in expanding the reach of these stories. She seeks out caregivers in the community to tell about this service and adds them to the list of recipients, and she uses this as an opportunity to introduce Lubuto libraries to them as well. She has now become the point person in the community to learn more about these stories, and she hopes for the libraries to open soon so that everyone she has reached out to, along with herself and her seven-year-old daughter, can enjoy the stories and books in the libraries in person.

Adam is a relatively new friend of Lubuto that took us by storm with both a desire to contribute to Lubuto and great energy and competence that became an instant and enormous help as we struggled to master so many new things in having our first-ever virtual fundraising event. Looking back on it, we're not quite sure what we would have done without him! So when someone comes along who not only makes an essential contribution but also so quickly understands our work and how and why it is so important, we wanted to make sure we kept him in the fold. Adam went from discovering us as an organization he wanted to volunteer with to being a member of our Board of Directors in a little over a month - seemingly showing up everywhere he could be helpful in the process. No question that Adam Hostetter is our Volunteer of the Month - congratulations, Adam!

Though our long-time supporter Pamela Tripp Melby is the newest member of our Board of Directors she hit the ground running to spearhead fundraising and an event to celebrate Lubuto's 15th anniversary along with director Sally Sinn. The original plan was, of course, to have an in-person event in Washington, DC, but the novel coronavirus changed all that, and necessitated an immediate pivot to virtual event planning. Whether that was outside of the comfort zone of the former head of the National Library of Education and Chief of the IMF's Information Services Division we don't know, as she joined Sally in pushing onward with dedication and great enthusiasm for Lubuto's work and mission - but maybe her Peace Corps volunteer background set her in this direction. The event is still ahead of us (on September 19, 2020) but right now we want to step back and recognize Pamela as Lubuto's Volunteer of the Month.

Isaac joined the Lubuto Model Library in April 2020 as a part-time volunteer and works hand-in-hand with Besa to interpret deaf storytimes in Zambian Sign Language. He enjoys volunteering in this way so that deaf children can be included in library activities. He also helps deaf people in his community by building their self-confidence and being a friend to them. Isaac says he is affected when he sees people in the deaf community being underrated, so he tries to empower them with self-confidence talks. Thanks for all you do, Isaac!

This month we are celebrating Dr. Akakandelwa Akakandelwa from the UNZA Library and Information Science department as our Volunteer of the Month. Several years ago, Dr. Aka identified and defined Lubuto's major domains of impact on the children and youth of Zambia. Now a founding member of our Zambia Board, he is working with our public library colleagues in Zambia to support our work in bringing impactful public library services to Zambia's children. Most recently, Dr. Aka was a member of Lubuto's Templeton World Charity Foundation workshop team assisting with our Global Innovations for Character Development proposal. Thank you, Dr. Aka, for all of your important contributions!

Our volunteer of the month is Ambassador Barbara Chilangwa. We are so honored that, after several years of serving on our Advisory Board, she took on the leadership and establishment of our new Zambian Board as Chairman. As a long-serving Permanent Secretary in Zambia’s education ministry and an executive leader of CAMFED Zambia, Lubuto could have no better guide. We were so grateful for her new year’s message: “Lubuto is an extraordinary organization and it’s a pleasure and an honor to serve on the local board. We are committed to supporting your staff here as they continue with their noble cause of working with children and communities.”