Caption: Kevin Keegan, National Director, FEBC Australia delivers the book donation to broadcaster Mohammad Bagherian.
FEBC’s Indonesia ministry and its Radio PARS program reaching refugees continues to grow.
A new initiative to reach out ‘on the ground’ – hand in hand with the popular Farsi broadcasts already undertaken – is a mobile library.
A bookshop in Caringbah, NSW, just down the road from FEBC Australia’s office, generously donated books to the program.
Bookmobiles expand the reach of traditional libraries by transporting books to potential readers, providing library services to people in otherwise-underserved locations such as remote areas and/or circumstances, such as residents of refugee community houses.
“By exploring a mobile library strategy we hope to collect and deliver books to refugees around Jakarta and provide self-education opportunities for every refugee. Being mobile, we are not limited to one area. More refugees will be reached in this way and we then can introduce them to our radio program.”
Refugees are not considered legal residents in Indonesia and they are not entitled to many basic human rights, including education. The first and only mobile refugee library in Jakarta, it will have a focus on girls and women who have never had the chance to access a library and do not have spare money to purchase books.
