L4PJ has two interrelated projects. Both projects aim to promote literacy while modeling the foundational Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills for just and cooperative communities.
L4PJ supports Read Alouds and provides books (in hard copies and online for the 7 Peace Libraries sponsored by the Transformational Leadership Center (TLC) in the former conflict areas of Rwanda
Read Alouds
Read Alouds introduce complex and stimulating material above the reading level of students learning English as a second language. The books promote the values of empathy, cooperation, respect, and problem-solving, the pre-cursors/prerequisites for creating peaceful homes, schools and communities. The culturally relevant books address the typical dilemmas of childhood and provide examples of strategies where children take agency and learn to solve their problems on their own. In educational terms this is called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
Curriculum
L4PJ aims to supply curricula for teaching language and reading in schools, libraries and NGOS -in conflict areas- throughout the Great Lakes area of Africa as well Nepal and Lebanon.
The project is to develop SEL through the classroom books used to teach how to read . The students are introduced to the characters and dilemmas in the classroom Read Alouds ( which can be in English or the home language). This means that when the simplified books are introduced to teach how to read the students are interested because the stories have meaning. L4PJ fervently supports home languages – using the home language as a bridge to acquiring English as a second language through the use of bilingual books.