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      Vanuatu Library Association
      Vanuatu Laebri Asosiesen
      Association Des Biblioteques Vanuatuanes

The Vanuatu Literacy and Library Week was held from 3 - 7 September 2007 . The Week was declared open by Ms. Madeleine Lesines, Acting Director of Basic education on behalf of the Minister of Education who is the country chair of the Vanuatu National Commission for UNESCO. In her address during the opening, Ms. Lesines thanked the VLA and the 2007 Literacy Committee for hosting such an important event to promote literacy in the Vanuatu, a country where literacy is an important issue. She reiterated that literacy rate in Vanuatu is quite low and is therefore an area of concern not only for the ministry but also for organisations involved in literacy.

Dr. Robert Early and Ms. Helen Tamtam gave an extremely interesting keynote address, focusing on literacy situation worldwide and gradually narrowing the focus to the situation in Vanuatu. The presentation of statistics was an eye opener as well as educational for the good number of school students who attended.

Dr. Robert Early is Director of the USP Pacific Languages Unit and Ms. Helen Tamtam, Coordinator of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the USP Emalus Campus.

Activities of the week were be held n the Public Library Conference Room from Monday to Thursday. The venue was then move on Friday to the Sea Front stage where most outdoor activities took place and captivated a good crowd throughout the whole day.

Monday 3^rd saw the official opening which will take place in the morning, followed by some exciting Wan Smol Bag Theatre activities in the afternoon. Children as well as the few adults who attended the WSB session enjoyed themselves with some mental as well as physical games.

Kiery Manasseh, Editor of the Vanuatu Daily Post opened Tuesdays presentations with a very interesting session, outlining how a newspaper like the Vanuatu daily Post is handled. He also touched on some journalism work ethics and made an appeal to students present to consider journalism as a career path.

Dr. Robert Early then presented another educational session on the work authors are involved in when publishing their work. Dr. Early shows how each stage of the process is crucial in itself and should be carried out with care. Dr. early also called on students to think about careers that promotes the capture of cultural, historical, social as well as political in books, newspapers and other medium that hold and store information for the future generation.

Mr. Ghevin Banga, an officer in the ITS Department at the USP Emalus Campus presented a session on Cyber and online publishing. Being a rather new concept those who attended found his session just as interesting. The young people who attended were captivated and learnt a few new ideas and concepts and once again were encouraged to think about IT as a career path.nd was able to There will be All thse were followed by fun activities with our talented Peace Corps volunteers.

A Literacy Conference was organised on Wednesday and this was attended by individuals, representatives from organisation involved in addressing literacy issues as well as government representatives. A lot of very important matters were discussed. This was followed by a poetry recital which was held at the Port Vila Market Haus. The people who participated range from some of our national poets as well as some budding and amateur poets as well as children. We believe this may be the first poetry recital to have taken place in Port Vila, and would like to encourage interested people to participate in ones that may be organised in future.

On Thursday 6th, we were introduced to a relatively new concept called Big6, an approach used in teaching communication, information and technology skills to children. The few people who attended found it very interesting and have expressed an interest in attending any more such sessions. The USP Library is planning to take up this challenge an organise a similar session later in the year for teachers and educators.

Friday 7th September was the last but most exciting day. Presentations and performances by some very brilliant local musicians and kastom dance groups started at about 9.30 am and finished shortly after 2 pm. The performances were great and the music captivating. Word games by the Summer Institute of Linguistics and story telling were also part of the activities which took place that day. To end the day and the week, children's books were given out to children and adults.

We have been fortunate that monetary assistance and in-kind have been provided for our celebrations by the following and would like to express our gratitude to: