Sharing the love … of books
Thanks to some international connections we are delighted to be able to share books from our Carramar library with a group of students in Mauritius.
A key part of managing our book collections in our school libraries is the act of ‘weeding’, or removing books from the shelves that are perhaps no longer popular with our students or no longer needed in our collection. Over the first semester of the year, our library team at Carramar set to work weeding our Early Learning, General and Reading Circle collections to make way for new books. The result was a huge collection of books that needed a new home.
Through a connection with Ms Keara Shaw, the Australian High Commissioner (Chargé d’Affaires) for Mauritius, our cross-campus library team and Emma Cornell, our Teacher Librarian from Carramar were able to begin planning for a book donation to a learning centre in Mauritius.
“Over the July school holidays I was very fortunate to visit Mauritius with my family and personally take four large boxes of books from St Stephen’s to the Caritas Centre of Learning, a facility in the east of the island which offers tutoring services and classes for both children and adults, with the aim of assisting those who are in need of further educational support,” said Emma.
“The Centre of Learning warmly welcomed us with a presentation and a tour, showing us the many amazing opportunities they offer local children to improve their English and literacy skills after school, as well as offering adult learning classes such as computer literacy classes for local women. This incredible organisation operates smoothly thanks to the hard work of local employees, teachers and many volunteers”.
During her time at the Caritas Centre of Learning, Emma had the opportunity to work with a group of local children to read some of our donated books together, where she marvelled at the multi-lingual engagement by the students.
Emma commented, “Whilst the children were more confident communicating in French rather than English, we ended up connecting over shared love of the beach, our pets, and of course who had the best dance moves! We were struck by the fact that these students speak French, Creole and English all in one day – which is certainly much more than I have ever had to grapple with in an educational setting”.
After sharing afternoon tea together and saying their thank yous, Emma was presented with a beautiful drawing from a student which says ‘Merci de tout coeur’or “thank you from all our hearts”, which is now proudly display in our library at Carramar.
We hope that our connection with the Caritas Centre for Learning is an ongoing one, as it is wonderful to know that our books are able to be passed on to such a valuable community learning centre where they will be read by truly remarkable and driven young people in Mauritius.