Planting seeds to read

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Kathy Knowles helps make libraries in Africa. She, along with some volunteers, work out of her River Heights home.

Sir Isaac Newton was apparently sitting under an apple tree when his theory of gravitation came to him.

Winnipegger Kathy Knowles was sitting under a tree in her garden in Africa in 1990, reading once a week to local children who had no storybooks, when the need for literacy struck her.

Children need to read. They need to have access to books.

They need to have a library, Knowles realized.

Twenty years after sitting under that tree, Knowles and her Osu Children's Library Fund, a non-profit organization, have helped more than 190 libraries in Africa.

Out of her command centre on the third floor of her River Heights home, Knowles works full time as the volunteer program director. She has helped build six large libraries serving thousands of children in Accra, Ghana, and the fund provides books, literacy classes, food and scholarships for deserving library members.

Knowles is well into the planning stages for a seventh library and is having a sod-turning ceremony this month.

"It's not just building libraries -- we give support to 200 community libraries," she said. "We give the librarians training and we give them books. Our free library training program is three weeks long."

Knowles said the goal of the charity is literacy for both children and adults.

"Not only are we providing facilities for children, who are nurtured and can further their education, we also have free literacy classes for adults," she said.

"They are so eager. One woman came who didn't know how to read or write and later she went to school."

Knowles said she has learned many things through the years as she builds libraries.

"As you do it, you get faster with projects," she said.

"I work with an architect and you get to know what works and what's functional. I've got a really good team and project manager. I use a great mason and a tiler. My painter has been with me since 1992 -- I don't even have to tell him the colours -- he knows the right colours.

"When you have your trades covered, it then comes down to funding."

Knowles said the next challenge is usually meeting with municipal government officials to persuade them to take on salaries and utilities.

"We don't want (the libraries) to fail," she said.

Knowles has also learned where to get books to stock the libraries.

"At the beginning, I was collecting a lot of books here, but we are now trying to buy locally over there," she said. "There are publishing companies in Ghana that I support. I think it's win-win for us and them."

Knowles said she wants to empower people in Africa to do a lot of the ongoing work with the charity and the libraries.

The housekeeper she had when she and her four children went to Ghana in 1989 to join her husband -- who worked for a Canadian gold mining company -- is now the finance person responsible for all of the library fund's accounts.

"I transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars over there and I can trust her with it," Knowles said.

Knowles has been honoured with awards that include a meritorious service award from Canada's Governor General, the YWCA's Women of Distinction Award and the Soroptimist Making a Difference Award. She has also been made an honorary fellow of the Ghana Library Association.

It's a far cry from those first readings to children under a tree.

"In life, you come across different things you want to do. It's wonderful I've been able to do this."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

To help the Osu Children's Library Fund:

"ö Send a cheque or money order payable to Osu Children's Library Fund to OCLF, 188 Montrose St., Winnipeg, R3M 3M7. Charitable receipts are given for donations of $15 or more.

"ö Online or monthly donations can be made through Canada Helps, a not-for-profit organization with a secure website at www.canadahelps.org

"ö You can support the charity through payroll deductions for United Way.

"ö For a tax-deductible $50 donation, you can send a Library in a Bag -- a cloth bag filled with eight new Ghanaian storybooks.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 27, 2010 C13