Education Germany Project #57447

Improving children's lives through education

by Lilipad e.V.

Project Report | Sep 27, 2023
Lilipad's Quarterly Report

By Sara Arsalane | Founder & Managing Director

Lilipad storytelling workshop in Berlin

Dear Lilipad friends & supporters,

It has been an exicting three months at Lilipad and we are excited to tell you about the key initiatives we took part in:

Diverse storytelling workshops in Berlin: This summer, we were able to organise more workshops than ever in our Berlin libraries. We particularly focused on our libraries that are located in refugee accommodations, given most are in remote areas of the city where the cultural offerings are less accessible.

Thanks to our two trained workshop facilitators and a group of dedicated volunteers (German and Arabic speakers), we were able to run storytelling workshops that incorporated various engaging art forms such as theatre, sketching and creative writing. Children were invited not only to participate but to actively become the authors of their own stories.

Art exhibition: Last July, Lilipad was invited to take part in an art exhibition dedicated to celebrating the Middle Eastern diaspora and artists from the region in Berlin. We showcased drawings made by children who visited our libraries and all were very excited to find out that their cute pieces were going to be exhibited!

New library in Morocco: We finalised a partnership with the large NGO SOS Villages d'Enfants Maroc aimed at opening a library in the village of Ait Ourir, an orphenage that hosts 176 children and opens its doors to another 312 from the area. Lilipad took care of financing the initial set of furniture (bookshelves, tables and chairs) and 500+ story books in Arabic and French. The library preparation was is its final stages when the disastrous earthquake hits the region on September 8th, causing significant human casualties and damage to the region.

Luckily the children and adults in the Ait Ourir village are all safe, however the library opening is delayed since SOS Villages' team are all mobilised to provide emergency relief to the communities that need it the most. We expect the library to be open before the end of the year.

Alongside the initiatives above, we maintained our core activities and dedicated efforts to finding new partnerships to start in the coming months. Your support is instrumental for a grassroots organisation like ours and we could not thank you enough for your trust.

Best,

Your Lilipad Team

Lilipad workshop facilitators at the exhibition

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May 30, 2023
Lilipad's Quarterly Report

By Sara | Founder & Managing Director

Nuria our Community Manager, at the Volunteer Fair

Lilipad friends,

We hope you’re all doing well and enjoying some sunshine wherever you are!

We've accomplished exciting things in the last months and we are excited to share them all with you:

2 new libraries in Berlin
New workshop series with Katharina, an educational expert
Berlin Volunteer Fair

1. Expanding our reach in Berlin

A core section of our work continues to be to provide multilingual libraries and educational experiences to refugee children in Berlin. Last April, we had the opportunity to grow our impact by opening two more of these children's libraries, both in the district of Kreuzberg.

Gemeinschaftsunterkunft Alt-Jakobstrasse: Through a partnership with the organisation EU Homecare, we established a children's library in a refugee accommodation hosting mainly Ukrainian families. The book selection for the library was mindfully curated and included story books in German, English and of course Ukrainian (ordered specifically from Ukraine). To ensure the library is active and inspiring for the children, we hired Polina, a young Ukrainian artist, to be our Educational Programs Coordinator for a two-month project.

Familienzentrum Cuvrystrasse: We've also collaborated with the community centre in Wrangelkiez to open another children's library. Unlike our libraries in refugee accommodations, which are only accessible to residents, this library is open to all children and families. Such libraries serve the adjacent purpose of promoting integration and multiculturalism by bringing families of all backgrounds together. We are lucky to already have a dedicated volunteer, Monika, who'll be responsible for running the library on a regular basis.

Lilipad has now established a total of 9 children's libraries in Berlin or 15 globally.

2. New workshop series

We are excited to announce that we hired a new workshop facilitator, Katharina, an educational expert with years of experience teaching languages and theatre and supporting refugee children to be prepared to enter the formal school system. Katharina is responsible for running regular reading workshops and is supported by incredible Lilipad volunteers that are fluent in the native language of the children. As usual, we ensure that our workshops are at least bilingual to make sure that they're inclusive and cater for the needs of children who have only recently arrived in Germany.

3. Berlin Volunteering Fair

We are honoured to have been invited to the Berlin Volunteering Fair which has taken place at the main city hall a few weeks ago. Needless to say, our work would not be possible without the dedication of an incredible team of volunteers. A big THANK YOU to everyone who's contributed to Lilipad in all shapes of forms over the last few years.

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Crowdfunding Campaign

Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far! Our crowdfunding campaign remains open and we continue to welcome donations - every little bit goes a long way. Your support will allow us to grow our impact in our existing libraries, launch brand-new projects and ultimately change children's lives through reading and education.

There are a few ways you can get involved:

Make a one-off donation on Lilipad’s GlobalGiving Project page
Become a recurring donor and set up a monthly donation on Lilipad’s GlobalGiving page - this can be edited or discontinued at any time. Your donations will be doubled by GlobalGiving from the 4th donation!
Reach out to info@lilipadlibrary.org if you have ideas that could support our fundraising efforts.
Reach out to fundraising@lilipadlibrary.org if the company you work for or know of any that are willing to make a corporate/gift donation

Thank you again for all the love and support.

Yours,

The Lilipad Team

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Feb 7, 2023
Lilipad's Quarterly Report

By Priscilla Megalaa | Program Lead

Lilipad Friends,

We hope you’re all doing well and keeping healthy.

We wanted to take a moment in this quarterly report to look back at what we’ve achieved in 2022!

10 libraries in 3 countries
Over 900 children reached
931 number of books provided in 9 different languages

Expanding our reach in Berlin

In 2022, we scaled our activities which has allowed us to expand our reach in Berlin. We opened a total of 4 new libraries. We were better able to scale due to developing the concept of a ‘Satellite library.’ Unlike our core libraries, the Lilipad satellite library is one that is run more independently by our partner organisation and where Lilipad is in the installation and opening. Satellite libraries do not require a multi-year collaboration with the partner organisation. This new concept allowed Lilipad to support a higher number of institutions - and ultimately children - by providing reading books and creating library spaces that can bring value to the community. We also developed partnerships that allowed us to implement 8 workshops and 76 attendees (ages 3-14) in our Berlin library locations.

Spotlight: our satellite libraries in Paris!

We are happy to say that our new satellite libraries in Paris are doing well! We opened libraries in two of the RésidSocial “hotels” and both are run as satellite libraries by our partner. Once a week, a one-hour workshop is led by the residence delegate: a volunteer resident who gathers the children in the common room, reads to them, and proposes educational games. Families are already borrowing books from our shelves, which is great! Here are some numbers from Paris libraries:

58 children in total have access to these libraries

383 books donated

60 books borrowed

Testimonies from our Paris partners:

“First of all, the Lilipad libraries have allowed the children in our residences to have easy and free access to books of all kinds. Lilipad has thus facilitated access to reading for the children, and created interest in this activity. The first days of the installation of the library, the children were very curious, flipped through the pages of all the books, read the summaries, ... and took some of them to their room. Moreover, the reading workshops created around the library libraries are a motor for meeting, exchanging and sharing books. Whether it is for the sociability of the children, their ability to live together better or the educational interest that these workshops have, we can only note the impact that this partnership has. The reading workshops have frequently been followed by sessions of games, homework help, ... So thank you LIlipad!” - Paris partner organization

Crowdfunding Campaign

Thank you to everyone who has supported us! We kicked off the crowdfunding campaign on GlobalGiving on the 29th of November, and have raised almost €10,000! This will help us to keep making an impact at our current libraries, launch brand new projects and keep making an impact on children's lives with education.

There are a few ways you can get involved:

Reach out to fundraising@lilipadlibrary.org if you have ideas and time in order to join the fundraising efforts
Reach out to: community@lilipadlibrary.org if you would like to volunteer at Lilipad
Share our project on your social media channels once again
Make a single donation on Lilipad’s GlobalGiving Project page
Set-up a monthly donation on Lilipad’s GlobalGiving page
Reach out to fundraising@lilipadlibrary.org if the company you work for or know of any that are willing to make a corporate/gift donation

We’re looking forward to sharing exciting news with our next quarterly update.

Yours,

The Lilipad Team

Links:

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