Street Libraries
The children ask us to see what is beautiful and grand in them.
The Street Library program has grown out of the Fourth World Movement’s conviction that the most effective way to support children to break out of the cycle of poverty is to nurture their desire to learn and to assist in the development of their creativity. We focus on those children who are the most excluded.
Fourth World Movement Street Libraries engage children in underprivileged communities in learning together with their families and communities through the use of books, art and computers. The Street Libraries take place on the sidewalk, in the community, and strive to create condition where children can succeed in learning.
From the collective art projects in which children work together towards the same goal to the time spent reading with an individual child, the success of Street Libraries lies in developing projects that correspond to the interests, concerns and hopes of children, parents and their comunity.
Since our Street Library program began over twenty years ago, we have continualy witnessed how children who are failing in school can demonstrate incredible intelligence and creativity, how they can undertake and succeed in challenging activites, given the right conditions. Finding ways to share those observations about these children and the efforts their parents make to help them learn leads us to develop tools like the Unleashing Hidden Potential CD-ROM.
