Two new Reading Posts were opened on December 2009 in the district of Pidie, Aceh. This has been a new breakthrough for Cinta Baca in its efforts to help the Acehnesse society in this region. About 4 years ago, Cinta Baca’s library in this area had encountered a lot of hindrances and obstacles internally and externally. One of those two Reading Posts is located at Mesjid Bambung village, 30 kilometers from Sigli, the nearest town in the district. the other one is located at Kampung Blang village, 15 kilometers from this town. Prior to the opening of these two Reading Posts, Cinta Baca’s staff had surveyed fifty villagers at each village to find out the kind of books they need most. Most of the people in these villages are poor. They do not have any public places where they can read books or other reading materials. Nearly all the housewives earn their living by growing rice. They spend most of their time at their rice field so they only pay a little attention to the development of their children’s education. Most of the men work in towns or cities far away from their village. They come home once or twice a week. In this unfortunate condition, the head of the families play a very minimum role in keep up with the progress of children’s education. That’s why the villagers are thankful for the Reading Posts and they hope that Cinta Baca will also help their children with their school lessons. For the sake of the students in their village, the people in these two villages welcome Cinta Baca with open arms.

 Since last January this year, Cinta Baca in Aceh has begun to work again on the scholarship program for a new semester. For the first semester we selected and registered 54 students from poor families. Most of them live in villages.  The process of selecting families, distributing the funds and visiting with the families several time a month is a time consuming effort but well worth it. The visits by the staff and our partners is mainly to monitor the students’ learning activities and develop good relationships in the community which is critical for any future expansion such as opening new posts, or developing partnerships with schools.

The main library in Banda Aceh is reporting a significant increase in visitors since since January 2009. The number of children visiting is also increasing, perhaps due in part to the monthly story time program.  The kids seem to especially enjoy this program for it is also combine with a drawing and writing competition.  The Cinta Baca staff had also distributed a lot of flyers to the community letting them know about the Library.

During the first six months of this year the library saw around 40 people visit each day. Numbers had slightly descrease over the past two months. One  The need for more new books in the collection may be one of the reasons for the decreasing number of people visiting the library. Several frequent visitors had asked us to provide certain books they need in the library. However, the high cost for providing good books has limited the staff from purchasing more books.

The staff continues to learn how to use what they have. In two weeks they plan to have some training on how to manage good and attractive libraries. Hopefully, this will attract new visitors and members. So far the library has some 800 members. Members are allowed to check out books from the library while visitors usually come to read or to do assignments with the help of the numerous books.

• Tutoring - elementary and middle school students mostly in mathematics, English, writing, and reading.
• ESL (English as a Second Language) - has been done a couple times this year and enhanced by visiting native speakers. This is mainly for students and English teachers who are interested in improving and practicing their English. Because this program is held in the library many  English teacher are using their influence to tell people about the library and our many services and programs.