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| Calais migrant camp gets makeshift library – and it needs more books | Calais migrant camp gets makeshift library – and it needs more books |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| Volunteers have set up a makeshift library at the migrant camp in Calais which the French authorities estimate now shelters at least 3,000 refugees. The library is just one of the essential services being provided on a voluntary basis at the camp, known as the Jungle, as the refugee crisis in Europe escalates. | Volunteers have set up a makeshift library at the migrant camp in Calais which the French authorities estimate now shelters at least 3,000 refugees. The library is just one of the essential services being provided on a voluntary basis at the camp, known as the Jungle, as the refugee crisis in Europe escalates. |
| Opened by British teacher Mary Jones, who baptised it Jungle Books (or Livres de la jungle in French), the library is stocked with giveaways. Jones herself has been taking books and other items to the camp for years, but wanted to go beyond that, she told Publishing Perspectives. “I wanted to start something that offered real, practical help. Many people here are well-educated — they want to get on and they want books that will help them read and write English, apply for jobs, fill-in forms.” | Opened by British teacher Mary Jones, who baptised it Jungle Books (or Livres de la jungle in French), the library is stocked with giveaways. Jones herself has been taking books and other items to the camp for years, but wanted to go beyond that, she told Publishing Perspectives. “I wanted to start something that offered real, practical help. Many people here are well-educated — they want to get on and they want books that will help them read and write English, apply for jobs, fill-in forms.” |
| Jungle Books is at the edge of the camp, explained Roger Tagholm, who reported the story. “They have Gone Girl, Lord of the Rings, Tom Wolfe, John Grisham ... but Jones wants to add books in the native languages of refugees.” Besides stocking around 200 books, the library supports a school that offers classes to the refugees and asylum seekers that live in the camp. The “Jungle” also has two churches, a mosque, grocery stores, restaurants, a bar, a barber and a bike repair shop: “It’s a growing mini-society,” said Tagholm. Jones hopes that eventually, the migrants will be able to run the library themselves. | |
| The page Calais Migrant Solidarity, set up to “document police harassment of migrants and strengthen resistance” in the border town, has been asking for supplies on their site for weeks. Among the items they list are “books, dictionaries, texts, zines etc – in any and all languages.” It has been fascinating, Jones told Tagholm, to discover what books the camp inhabitants ask for, such as short stories and poetry, and she made a call for the following genres: “we need Pashto-French dictionaries, Pashto-English dictionaries, Eritrean dictionaries, books in native languages.” To support Jungle Books, please get in touch with Mary Jones at maryjones@orange.fr. | The page Calais Migrant Solidarity, set up to “document police harassment of migrants and strengthen resistance” in the border town, has been asking for supplies on their site for weeks. Among the items they list are “books, dictionaries, texts, zines etc – in any and all languages.” It has been fascinating, Jones told Tagholm, to discover what books the camp inhabitants ask for, such as short stories and poetry, and she made a call for the following genres: “we need Pashto-French dictionaries, Pashto-English dictionaries, Eritrean dictionaries, books in native languages.” To support Jungle Books, please get in touch with Mary Jones at maryjones@orange.fr. |
| Books change lives – other libraries in crisis situations | Books change lives – other libraries in crisis situations |
| Do you know of other examples? Have you worked in providing books or literacy-related services in crisis or emergency situations? Let us know in the comments | Do you know of other examples? Have you worked in providing books or literacy-related services in crisis or emergency situations? Let us know in the comments |