Libraries Without Borders / Bibliothèques Sans Frontières
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Mission Statement
The mission of Libraries Without Borders (LWB) is to address the structural causes of economic and human underdevelopment through the expansion of libraries, education, and training. We seek to make information and knowledge accessible, to reduce the digital divide, to build resilience and autonomy, and to promote cultural heritages throughout the world.
About This Cause
Libraries Without Borders (LWB) is a leading international NGO in culture-based development founded in 2007, headquartered in Paris, with 75 employees and an annual budget in 2015 of $8M. We have built more than 300 libraries around the world, trained thousands of librarians, and pioneered technologies that provide access to information and culture as a basic human right. In ten years, we will have affected the lives of more than half a million people, including refugees and displaced persons in the African Great Lakes Region, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, and communities at risk from Queensland, Australia to Detroit, Michigan. We provide the technology and programs to access reliable information and knowledge. With local partners, we develop customized educational and cultural programs that build resilience, autonomy, and agency. OUR PRINCIPLES: After a natural disaster or during a political conflict, humanitarian aid naturally focuses on providing food, health care, shelter, and clothing. Once these basic needs have been met, we believe that it is essential for affected communities to connect to worlds of information and knowledge in order to fight ignorance and boredom and to build resilience for a more self-reliant future inside and outside the camps. For the last seven years, our responses to humanitarian crises have prioritized access to information, education, and knowledge to empower populations at risk. To strengthen the capacity of local communities at risk, we have created innovative tools like the Ideas Box and Koombook, and we have partnered with local organizations to establish safe spaces in the camps where families and their children can actively participate in educational and cultural programs. We also believe that culture is a formidable force for promoting peace and reconciliation. Access to information, education, and culture are critical in conditions of post-conflict and transitional justice to promote healing and build more tolerant communities. Lastly, we advocate for a cultural approach to humanitarian action centered on the cultural needs of the communities served, and with their active participation in the creation of educational and cultural projects. OUR STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES We seek to reduce inequalities of access to information, education, and culture globally. We seek to reinvent the library as a key space and that can reduce inequality and strengthen community, democracy, and citizenship; to reimagine the roles of librarians as agents of social change and social entrepreneurship; and to use libraries an incubators for social projects and social change. For more about our activities, principles, and programs, please visit our website: www.librarieswithoutborders.org www.bibliosansfrontieres.org (in French)