Cape Town - Prefects lined the driveway to welcome guests to Hout Bay’s Oranjekloof Moravian Primary School for the opening of its library on Friday.
The words “open a book, open your mind” are just one of many things that catch your attention as you enter the light and bright space filled with 4 500 books. Opening the library, principal Mkhululi Qaba said: “What this means for the children, is they have a place of refuge, a place of hope and a place of learning.
“Someone said the theme for today is ‘read to lead’. Now they can come here to prepare themselves for those leadership roles that they will have in the community and at large.
"This is rightfully so for the year 2017 when the head of education, Brian Schreuder, said he wants to drive all schools, across the whole province, under the simple banner: ‘you walk in to school to learn, and you leave to lead’”
The library, which involved a year of planning, is a collaborative effort between Benenden Girls’ School in the UK whose pupils raised the funds for the structure; Breadline Africa, an NPO that has supplied 75 containers which have been re-purposed as libraries around South Africa; the Common Good Foundation, founded by Common Ground Church in 2005; The Bookery, an NPO installing libraries in underprivileged schools and offering support to library assistants; and School Aid UK, which supports education in Africa by redistributing high quality books and educational materials.