Part+1

Part 1

Select an organization, an institution or group that needs a collection (or part of a collection) developed. Any organization or institution is suitable. Collections may include any format or type of material, tangible or intangible. Characterize the parent organization for whom the collection is being developed and those employed by it. (For example, the parent organization of an academic library would be the college or university. For a school library media center, the parent institution would be the school.) Answer the following questions about your parent organization:
 * What kind of an organization is it?
 * Summarize parent organization mission, goals and objectives.
 * How would you characterize employees or community members? (for example, are they highly educated?)
 * How does the parent organization measure success? (Be as specific as you can.)
 * How successful is the organization? (Be as specific as you can.)
 * How might an appropriate collection help the parent organization to be more successful?
 * If you could develop one collection to help this organization to be more successful, what would it be? Why ?

VALERIE'S EDITS WILL BE IN GREEN SO WE CAN TRACK -- All references are noted fully within the text so we can pull them later for references.

In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquakes and aftershocks that devastated the island nation of Haiti few organizations were as well-placed as Save the Children to implement appropriate short, medium and long-term solutions for the children of Haiti. Save the Children (SC) is an international leader in providing services to disadvantaged children around the world. For the past 30 years, SC has worked in the country of Haiti, providing continuous programming to that nation's children under the age of 10. SC has long-standing working relationships with the Ministry of Education and other local Haitian organizations. It co-leads the education cluster at the national level in Haiti which ensures that SC does and will continue to have a strong voice in the rebuilding of Haiti's education infrastructure along the international mandate of "Build Back Better for Haiti."

Prior to January 12, 2010, Haiti already suffered from one of the worst literacy rates in the world. Few public monies were invested in education and there was little national coordination. Haiti spent a large part of the 20th century embroiled in violent conflict. Education was not a national priority -- 90 percent of the country's primary schools were run by non-public sector agencies. Schooling costs ran upwards of 25 percent of family income for those families choosing to send their children to school (AGIRE 2010). This practice was in open defiance of UNESCO provisions that each nation provide free access to primary education for all its citizens (EFA 2009). These pre-earthquake conditions resulted in devastating educational and literacy statistics.
 * Only 2/3 of children ages 6-12 attended primary school
 * Of those who did attend primary school, only 1/3 reached 5th grade
 * Those who reached 5th grade often left school without achieving basic literacy skills
 * To teach primary school, an instructor was required to complete one year of secondary education
 * More than 500,000 children lacked access to basic education

Over the next five years, SC in Haiti has committed to an education project that directly benefits a minimum of 11,200 children in grades 1 to 6. Utilizing existing relationships with the Haitian Ministry of Education and the education cluster, SC will focus its efforts on children who were displaced by the earthquake as well as those suffering psychosocial trauma from the disaster. In practical terms, this effort will consist of the development of 90 temporary classrooms over two school years (50 in the first and 40 in the second). SC will also evaluate the structural integrity of the 29 schools it worked with prior to the earthquake and determine which of those may be rebuilt to house permanent education facilities (estimated 20 percent). Specifically within these classrooms and schools, SC will provide school supplies and textbooks for 11,200 students along with early literacy skills training for up to 180 teachers.

Save the Children is a Four Star Charity and is committed to continuous evaluation and auditing of its development programs. The numerical goals for their efforts in Haiti are already identified. To verify completion of their goals, all staff both in and out of Haiti will compile appropriate sources of verification. These include school registers, training registers, program activity reports and observation sheets.

Save the Children-US has specifically identified the need for 30,000 units of early literacy materials in Kreyol to supplement their temporary classrooms. These materials must be targeted to ages birth through age 10 to account for the particular literacy needs of the population in question. SC has asked for assistance in compiling these materials.

We have committed to providing 5,000 units of early literacy materials (multiples of works allowed) to SC that will address the library needs of one or more temporary classrooms. Ultimately this collection will be incorporated into a permanent school structure in the Port-au-Prince area. Many donors sent reading materials to Haiti following the earthquake. Our group is committed, though, to ensuring that the materials we send follow UNESCO's Education for All guidelines stipulating mother language materials, commitment to recognizing the unique cultural history of the children receiving the materials, and materials that equally address the literacy needs of girls and boys. Our training as information professionals gives us the appropriate background to do this well.

This great document, from a Save the Children meeting in Italy, lays out many of the stats and details we need to complete this section!!! [|http://www.agire.it/filemanager/image/Haiti/Progetti_e_Budget/Save_the_Children_Narrativo.pdf]

For this project we elected to develop a collection for a temporary housing community that has developed outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti following the series of earthquake and aftershocks in January 2010. These communities are being served by a host of governmental organizations and NGOs. We are in the process of identifying a legitimate and credible organization that will allow us to partner with them to create our actual collection. Although ad hoc tent and rubble shelters were put in place immediately following the disaster by both residents and agencies, the Government of Haiti and the United Nations are taking the lead in determining the medium and long-term arrangement of these communities.

This collection will be an official gift from the School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee. Following the completion of the project, we will continue to work with the University, partners of the School, and interested fellow students, staff members and faculty to collect the materials and deliver them to Haiti. As such, we need to follow University regulations as well as the regulations of the sponsoring organization in Haiti in crafting the collection.

In a February 26, 2010 conversation with Dr. Ed Cortez, Director of the School of Information Sciences, we determined that we will partner with an organization that does not have a religious affiliation.