AFFIRM

Me and Aurelia setting up the stall. She is a great gal, another privilege to work withA few Saturdays ago I had the pleasure of attending the AFFIRM festival in Aranui representing our library. Every year I go to this event and always get a huge blast out of it. Aranui is the suburb in Christchurch that has the highest deprivation levels in the South Island. The people live hard lives and you feel you are not in Christchurch at all. This year we gave away boxes and boxes of books to families. One per person and they loved them. One 9 year old boy pointed to a book and said 'mum, they have this at the school library', I said, 'would you like to have and keep it?' He nodded and smiled quietly, absolutely overwhelmed and happy to own such a gorgeous book. I almost cried and felt privileged to be able to do this for a living.
This was a great performance by Wainoni school. The dances had a Maori and Samoan flavour and the kids had such fun, and so proud.

All our visitors were friendly and fun to talk to and this community is fantastic. We so want to build a library here and we know it would be a great asset to the community. Once you have spent a day with a community such as this you lose all judgement. You have to be able to walk in other peoples shoes to even half way understand the hardships some people face.
This little guy couldn't wait to start reading