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The Indiana Daily Student

Books & Beyond program teaches English to Rwandan students

Hannah Carter from Books & Beyond, left, Emmanuel, and John Bizimana check out books at elementary school in Rwanda.

When it began in 2008, the IU Books & Beyond organization set out to work with a school in New Jersey to write and publish English books for school children in Kinigi, Rwanda.

Now, eight years later, Books & Beyond has expanded to include more than 50 student volunteers, a class in the School of Education and partnerships with Bloomington’s Project School and Harmony School.

The program contains “a lot of moving parts,” Books & Beyond Student Director Abigail Hamilton said.

It’s working to help remedy the Rwandan book famine, where obtaining reading materials in English, French and the native Kinyarwandan languages is near 
impossible.

“There’s just no reading material there, so giving these books to the students, they’re able to go home and practice their reading skills,” 
Hamilton said.

The project has recently developed a partnership with the Project School and the Harmony School to allow third- through sixth-grade students to write and illustrate short two- to four-page stories. Once edited, the stories will become one of 15 American stories to be included in this year’s book.

Books & Beyond prints a new book each summer. With 2,000 books being printed each year — one for every student of the Kabwende Primary School — the program will print its 16,000th book this summer.

“Every single student at the school, no matter if they’re going home for the summer holidays or if they are going to be involved in our English learning camp that happens for two weeks, they each get a book to bring home and to share with their families,” Hamilton said.

This year, stories from the 8- to 14-year-old Kabwende Primary School students will also be featured in the book, written in Kinyarwandan and translated to English. The Kabwende students’ stories make up 10 stories and will be three to five pages each.

These books will be used by IU students as they teach the program’s two-week English learning camp at the Kabwende Primary School. Taken as a three-credit-hour class through the School of Education, the class allows students to learn about teaching and Rwandan culture in the second eight weeks of the spring semester before embarking on their trip to Kinigi.

Here, the students teach kinesthetics, conversational English, reading and writing through workshops, games and reader’s theater 
activities.

Faculty adviser Beth Samuelson said the program is completely run by IU students. They teach each other about Rwandan history, prepare one another for the trip and work together to promote the organization’s initiatives as they work within the Bloomington community.

“As it’s grown, students have seen the possibility to get involved and have seen the opportunities to grow,” Samuelson said. “It’s really powerful for the community to be reaching out to different schools.”

It’s part of an effort to expand the organization stemming from Foster Quad’s Global Village Living-Learning Center into the Bloomington community, 
Hamilton said.

“By working with those Bloomington communities, those Bloomington schools, we are bringing the project much closer to IU and to Indiana as a whole,” Hamilton said. “The students get to see what it’s like to hang out and get to work with students from IU, and the IU students get to learn a little bit more about the Bloomington community, just beyond IU’s campus.”

Gabriel Jones, a two-year Books & Beyond volunteer, said what sets the organization apart is its care for the individual volunteers in the program.

“There’s a really strong focus on doing well for our members,” Jones said. “We’re not just focused on doing well for people in Rwanda. We’re focused on doing well for people right here in Bloomington, Indiana.”

The program most recently worked to create a reading room with a library of early reader books and illustrated dictionaries for the Kabwende Primary School.

Junior Martha Midkiff, who traveled to Rwanda last summer and saw the library in use for its first summer, said students were hesitant to use the library at first.

In a town of about 100,000 people, Midkiff said students could only find two libraries.

“It’s still a very new thing to them,” Midkiff said. “I think that will be very, very useful to them and will be just another resource to add to their 
education.”

Books & Beyond is now launching its next project. In addition to its typical book publication, the program is seeking a partnership with IU’s Play 360 to help build a playground in summer 2017 at the Kabwende Project School, where students’ only recess entertainment some days can be makeshift soccer balls made of tied plastic bags.

Midkiff, who taught kinesthetic classes at the Kabwende Project School last summer, said she thought the playground could help the students learn actively.

“They’ve never really experienced a playground before,” Midkiff said. “This would be a great resource to expand their learning and, after all, just let them have some fun.”

One of the best parts about the trip is the ability for the Rwandan students to interact with Americans on a more personal level, Midkiff said.

“When we go over there, it’s one of the only times that someone actually gets to know them and their culture rather than just observing it from afar,” Midkiff said. “I think they feel appreciated, and they get to use our time with them to their benefit to help them learn their 
English.”

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