Kia ora koutou,

In June I came back from Fiji as I am part of the INELI-Oceania cohort. This is a project of the Global Libraries initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and something I have been part of and  passionate about for years.

The vision for the Summit was to bring together key regional stakeholders, library practitioners and INELI-Oceania innovators to advocate for the role of public libraries and librarians in society and to inspire a vision and agreement for collaborative and sustainable development of public library services in the Pacific.

Myself and a few others involved in this project will be doing a Staff Development Session for those interested later on, I just wanted to quickly pass on a few things here beforehand. There were a lot of great advocates who shared their learnings, including Global Libraries Director – Deborah Jacobs, IFLA President Elect – Christine Mackenzie and the First Lady of East Timor – Kirsty Sword Gusmão.

The one that stayed with me the most though was by Sanjana Shrestha who as well as being the Country Director of READ Nepal, is also just an amazing human being! If you want to be inspired about Libraries changing lives, be sure to watch this.