Knowledge Tree Education Project

-- a Go Beyond project

(Click on any photo and then use left / right arrow for slide show)

OVERVIEW

The Knowledge Tree Education Project was originally a branch of a combined water and library project, which was dubbed by Go Beyond "Mountain Village Project". Now a stand-alone project, Knowledge Tree Education Project is helping to provide children in rural and impoverished areas with greater access to a quality education and in particular:

To make high-quality picture and reference books available to students in poorer rural areas
To provide supervised access to computers for children for whom computers are unavailable
To provide workshops to share expertise with local teachers on topics such as
- Shared reading
- Early learning
- Story telling
- Motivation & encouragement
- Computer & TV use
- Parenting & home learning
To facilitate contact between local teachers and those in other locations to provide
- Sharing of expertise
- Cooperation to benefit both parties

LIBRARY FOR PRIMARY AGED CHILDREN

Knowledge Trees’ first activity undertaken in the project was the setting up of a library for rural primary school aged children. The library was first proposed in a meeting with the village chief where we had been installing water systems, and the details involved in setting it up were worked out - the library was to be managed by the local primary school, which would also provide a room for the project. Two volunteers, one with extensive experience in children’s education and one with IT talent, prepared the booklist for the library, which was finalized in consultation with the school. The majority of the books on the list were attractive high quality picture books on all subjects.

2010 – U-ACTION TEAM PREPARES THE LIBRARY ROOM

A student volunteer team visited in August 2010 and prepared a room in the local school, and did some basic repairs – the vision was to make the room attractive and appealing for children.

Preparing the room

2011 - HONG KONG POLY-U TEAM FINISH SETTING UP THE LIBRARY

Then in January, 2011, a follow-up team comprised of Hong Kong Poly-University students funded through the Poly-U SIP program, completed the initial phase of work on the library. This work included setting up furniture, indexing all the donated books, and placing them on the shelves, ready for use.

Getting the initial consignment of books ready for placement on the library shelves

2011 Hong Kong Poly-U team (left) and their team's poster at the university entrance (right)

An initial consignment of books from the 5000 book long list thus became available to students in the area, who attend the school from the 7 villages in the surrounding area.

NOV 2012 UPDATE

Our Yunnan volunteers in Kunming `received donations of another 250 books from the booklist throughout 2012 and added these to the library in November, 2012. They also spent time liaising with the local school team managing the day to day running of the library and found their commitment to and level of enthusiasm for the project to be alive and well.

Getting ready to leave on the 3-hour trip to the library

Enthusiastic volunteers add books to the library

CAN YOU HELP?

Can you help donate books to “Knowledge Tree Education Project” – every book counts and your donation will move this library one step closer to completion! Click here for details of how to help.