Sierra Leone: a library for Pademba Road Prison

Well, it has taken 7 years, but today I am happy to say that I have finally delivered on the promises I made so rashly back in 2010. I am back in Freetown on a monitoring visit for the book donation charity I now work for, having given up my career in academic librarianship to follow this path. My visit, by chance, coincided with the presentation, today, of hundreds of brand new books to the correctional facility on Pademba Road. Note: Correctional facility, not prison. The government has embraced the concept of rehabilitation of prisoners, and the library is key to that. These books were donated by the charity I work for last year; I had the pleasure of selecting suitable titles from the books donated by publishers in the UK. They were shipped to Sierra Leone by our partner organisation Practical Tools Initiative, but for various administrative reasons could not be presented to the correctional centre by Advocaid until today. Which was lucky for me as I got to be present at the ceremony!

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