Readmoore House is a charitable foundation established to expand the horizons of rural communities in Nigeria by promoting literacies though establishing community libraries in rural Nigeria using under-utilised country homes. Due to financial constraints, most publicly owned schools in rural areas are under provisioned and rarely have libraries. Consequently
Our flagship project is the Dr Akomaye Oko Memorial Library in Bebuagbong-Ipong, Obudu in the Cross River state of Nigeria. This project is established in honour of the work and legacy of Dr Akomaye Oko, (1947-2010), teacher, scholar, poet and playwright. Dr Akomaye Oko was passionate about two things: learning and people to which he committed most of his adult life. Readmoore House is a community library based in his sprawling country home in Bebuagbong, Ipong, Obudu, Cross River State Nigeria. It is planned as a community library to support three kinds of literacies: English language, digital and financial in the community. Phase 1 of the project will be to support learning especially English language at the local St Theresa schools . The plans in this stage include a children's library including school texts, fiction, non fiction , reference and other appropriate material. Using off-grid solar power, it is hoped that the Reading Room will provide a dedicated study space where children can study and get support with their homework. Additionally there will be a Film Club where children can watch movies. It is hoped that these measures will help to improve written and oral English skills which are quite poor and place such children at a decided disadvantage in securing a place in higher education and employment. Phase II will be focused on increasing digital literacy with special emphasis on children and youths. We plan to procure Internet access and suitably robust computer tablets that are durable and can be easily charged by solar energy. Feedback from our initial surveys indicate that women consider being able to open and operate bank accounts as important. Our financial literacy programme Wrapper Ear is targeted at increasing the understanding and use of banking facilities among women in particular. Readmoore House has a team of committed volunteers in Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States who are in the process of collecting used and new books, computers and other donations ahead of our launch in the last quarter of the year. Please get in touch if you have any books you no longer love enough to keep! We are also reaching out to the families of retired or deceased scholars who may have 'stranded books'. Stranded books are books which are no longer being used because the owners have retired or passed away and there are no family members in those disciplines. Although they may be old but they are still better than nothing which is what many students in publicly owned schools have!
