A Cultural Program for Children and Young People during the Mid-year Vacation
Posted on
Alexandria, 18 January 2005—The Children’s and Young People’s Libraries at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) have organized an entertaining cultural program for children aged 6–16 years old.
The program, held during the mid-year vacation, aims at increasing the social awareness of children and developing their skills through sessions, lectures and workshops which are run by professionals and specialists.
The program will include a seminar entitled How to be Successful in Dealing with Others presented by Dr. Maysa el Nayal, Director of the Psychology Department, Alexandria University and a member of the Childhood and Young People Committee at BA; a lecture about healthy nutrition presented by Dr. Nagwa Essam Eldin, nutrition specialist; a meeting with Dr. Yakoub El Sharouny, children books’ writer and a member of the Childhood and Young People Committee at BA; as well as a meeting with Dr. Mohamed Me’awad, Professor and Head, Mass Communication Department, Institute of Graduate Studies, Ain Shams University, and a member of the Childhood and Young People Committee at BA, who will talk to the children of how to prepare magazines.
The program also comprises a number of workshops, including a workshop on cartoons where the children write up a story and then produce an animated movie based on this story. Another workshop about museum activities will be held in collaboration with the Antiquities Museum at BA, where the children will be introduced to different antiquities and will draw and copy them using clay or sculpturing. This is in addition to workshops on space, oceans, and deserts.
The mid-year program will additionally include Research for All where children will be taught how to prepare research papers by using different sources of information such as books, references, journals, the Internet and electronic databases. A research paper will be presented by each participant by the end of the program.
The program introduces the participants to “My Book: Digital and Printed”, a project where children select a book from a database, print it, and bind it, therefore choosing and creating their own books.
With the aim of encouraging research by children, the library is presenting a program entitled Search for Information where the librarians will teach the children how to search for information in encyclopedias, atlases and dictionaries.
The Children’s and Young People’s Libraries at BA are organizing monthly meetings with the parents of their members. During the meeting, held every first Thursday of each month for two hours, librarians accompany the parents on a tour of the library, introducing them to the services offered to their children; and activities held such as lectures, workshops and competitions. They also discuss the difficulties facing the librarians, children and their parents and try to help solve them.
This cultural program comes within BA’s initiative to encourage children and young people to explore and promote the development of their minds.