Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Goes to Tamer Institute for Community Education
RSSBy SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 03/25/2009
The 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award has been awarded to the Tamer Institute for Community Education, a nonprofit organization that promotes reading in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.Founded in 1989, the Ramallah-based Tamer is an educational nongovernmental institution created to help the Palestinian community during the first intifada (uprising).
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The Tamer Institute for Community Education, a nonprofit organization that promotes reading in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is winner of the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. |
Not only does it encourages reading but also the ability to express and communicate personal experiences, with children writing their own stories and performing as storytellers.
Tamer visits children and young people in villages and refugee camps and targets children and teens from six to 21 years old. Their programs receive aid from Unicef, Save the Children, and the Anna Lindh Foundation,
The library in Ramallah is Tamer’s resource center and functions as the hub of a large network of local children’s libraries, currently more than 70, which also work with each other.
In addition to distributing books, Tamer coordinates and initiates various activities such as storytelling, workshops for authors and illustrators, and psychosocial literary activities for children traumatized by the experience of war.
The Lindgren award jury said Tamer has spent two decades promoting a love of reading among Palestinian children and young adults. “Under difficult circumstances, the Institute carries out reading promotion of an unusual breadth and versatility. In the spirit of Astrid Lindgren, the Tamer Institute acknowledges the power of words and the strength of books, stories and imagination as important keys to self-esteem, tolerance and the courage to face life.”
The award will be presented by Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria on 2 June in the Stockholm Concert Hall in the presence of the Swedish Minister for Culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.
Named after the Swedish author, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is the world’s largest prize for children’s and young people’s literature, and comes with a $578,000 check.
