The CERFO (Akeri) Free Library allows students from the three wards (Nkoanrua, Nkoarisambu, and Akheri) to meet and study or do other discussions based on their studies. In the Arusha region, we only have one public library (The Arusha Library), which is open to the general public and is located at the center of Arusha town. Most of the students from the Meru district are never able to travel to access the far located Arusha Library due to costs involved in reaching Arusha town and time constraints. Reading isn't just one of life's great pleasures, it is an essential life skill; it improves literacy, develops a positive attitude towards learning, and is crucial to the academic and social development of young people. Despite the importance of literacy, large class sizes and lack of resources lead to few reading opportunities for many children in developing countries like Tanzania.
Our focus is to contribute significantly to providing equal education opportunities to all Tanzanians. The Akeri Free Library serves the community and links up all students and people who need to access the materials and books in the library. Since public schools are always closed on the weekends and students can't access their school libraries, CERFO free library was founded to provide free a learning and tuition center where students get to meet over the weekdays /weekends and access materials for free. In a society of lifelong learning - whether of a formal or informal nature- public free libraries will be nodes connecting the local learning setting with the global resources of information and knowledge. Public libraries must therefore be allowed to play a role of fundamental importance in developing future systems of lifelong learning. The development of information and communication technology has already laid the basis for creating information networks, giving users even of small local public libraries access to worldwide sources of information. Our Free Library offers guidance and training in information search and quality rating of information sources. Thus, public libraries are necessary if not sufficient prerequisites for a democratic knowledge society. CERFO believes that to develop tomorrow's library and librarian, and we will have to build on the experiences gained in radically different settings.
Our Free Library is currently proving to be improving literacy rates at our community level. Our library work, Charity book, and other donations have assisted our reading program, leading to strengthening the reading culture in schools and villages, resulting in a more confident reading population that is better equipped for the future.
To date, CERFO free library has 2,000 books that touch different aspects of learning.
We urge everyone who passes through this website to tell others that our free library(that serves more than 500 students) needs more books and equipment's/facilities for the library. We kindly ask everyone to support this library by any means seen as effective.
You can donate books to the library or volunteer for a project here, and you can also start online campaigns for our library or even join us on our Charity Books program, where we walk house to house in the Arusha region asking for any book manuals that are no longer used.
We welcome all donors, well-wishers, and other volunteers that are willing and able to work with us in our library and the other projects offered by CERFO.
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