UMassGives 2024

Hello! We are World Librarians, a registered student organization who work as a team to provide Open Educational Resources to the offline learning communities we serve in countries in Africa. At its simplest, the World Librarian project pairs the requests of children and their teachers with librarians who have access to the Internet and openly-licensed educational resources. 

Last year, thanks to the generous donations we received through UMassGives 2023, we successfully established a World Librarian computer lab in the Dzaleka 60,000 person refugee camp in Malawi (Fig. 1) and as a result, we are now providing openly-licensed educational material to teachers and children there. 

This year our UMass World Librarians club, in partnership with the Ready Aiders Foundation in Kenya, is trying to raise $2,000 to help build a new World Librarians instance to help young women living in the 500,000 person Mathare Slum (Fig 2.) in Nairobi, learn Information and Computer Technology and other skills. 

These donations will go to help pay for our colleague in Nairobi named Wachira Warukira (“Waruks”) (the tall man in Fig. 3 below). Your donations would directly impact the lives of many people who, without the services provided by World Librarians, would never have the opportunity to learn from or even access these resources.

All of our funds will go directly to the establishment of a new World Librarian instance by Waruks in Kenya and will be dedicated to the provision of resources necessary for travel, technology, and operation. We hope you consider donating to Waruks and the World Librarians’ effort to help us share the privilege of accessing online educational resources to communities without the internet. Online access is something we all take for granted; our mission is to amplify the impact of all of the forgotten resources at our fingertips and we thank you for being a part of what makes it possible.

Our program is a model co-founded between the ْUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) and ShiftIT in Malawi that provides open educational resources to schools and libraries in Malawi and Kenya. This happens through an innovative system that relies on both authentic social interactions and new technologies that while revolutionary, can be costly to initiate. 

For more information on the World Librarians program, visit worldlibrarians.org.