Atlantyca and Janghi NPO Establish Library in Dakar
In conjunction with of International Human Rights Day this month (December 10), Atlantyca Entertainment has donated 250 of their French Language books to enrich the children’s collection at the new library run by Janghi NPO (janghi.org), the non-profit organization that works, through donations and crowdfunding, to finance access to Senegalese secular school education for children who have been excluded from it.
Janghi NPO supports children in difficult economic and social situations, including many street children like the young talibés. In addition to promoting education, Janghi NPO provides food support to prevent children from being forced to beg, as well as health care, monitoring their nutritional status and taking measures to improve living conditions such as housing, clothing and hygiene.
While taking into account the values and traditions of their cultural, educational origins, and in order to foster a more solid future perspective that will allow even the poorest children to have access to books, the association has created a children’s library in French, that is now being greatly enriched.
Donating 250 books in French, part of the ethical project MotherLandMotherTongue conceived by Atlantyca in 2012, will therefore form the basis of the first Janghi House Library, located in the Parcelles Assainies neighborhood of Dakar, in the certainty that reading and stories will always be valuable allies even in the most complex situations.
Claudia Mazzucco, Atlantyca Entertainment CEO who devised the MotherLandMotherTongue project says: “Atlantyca’s MotherLandMotherTongue project was created to support children by means of education so that, through reading, they may grow up with an adequate level of learning and culture. We are moved by this new collaboration, the latest in a number of initiatives that for almost 10 years have seen us working alongside Consulates, Libraries, Cultural Institutes, Festivals and Cultural Associations. This new donation will develop the Children’s Library at the House of Janghi in Dakar: we could not have hoped for a better “home” for our books and a story more beautiful than this one – it’s straight out of a book.”
Aram Chantal Mbow, co-founder and President of “Janghi NPO” had this to add: “After 7 years of activity in which we have given the right to schooling to almost 400 children, last year we also decided to set up “Keur Janghi”: a place for children that is always open to growth, study, health care, to feeling loved and being safe. We immediately thought of the library as being a key project, knowing how books are really magical for children – for them to imagine places and take amazing flights of fancy, to smile in being able to relate to different cultures and gather wishes in order to dream even bigger dreams! So Atlantyca Entertainment’s donation has allowed us to expand this project: not only by responding to our needs, but by doing so with a circular donation that will now give new life to these books – and with a donation between countries, which for us represents a “bridge” between cultures and a new opportunity to show how, together, we can really do so much.“
