UgCLA PROGRAMS 

Activities

National conferences and workshops

For the first three years of its existence, UgCLA organized workshops twice a year to which every member library was entitled to send a representative (members were allowed to send two representatives to the first one). Then, as the Association became too big to work in a workshop format, an annual conference was instituted instead. Seven such conferences have been held to date. Workshops are also organized for select groups of members in association with particular projects.

Workshops and conferences that are for the Association as a whole are organized around a particular theme. This theme is usually related to one or more projects to be carried out in the following months, as shown in the table below:

In 2018 the Association held no conference since it was undergoing reorganization and was unable to raise the necessary funds.

Regional workshops

In 2011 the Association organized its members into regional clusters: Mbale (8 libraries), Jinja (10 libraries), Mukono (8 libraries), West Nile (11 libraries), Western (10 libraries), Masaka (7 libraries), and Kampala (15 libraries, including those thatare not in Kampala but are far away from any other member library). The composition of these clusters shifts as more libraries join UgCLA and as others become inactive. In 2011 UgCLA was able to provide a small budget to each cluster for holding a workshop on a topic of the cluster’s own choice and hosted by a library selected by the cluster’s members. The Association was not able to provide such a budget in 2012 though discussion of environmental issues at the 2012 annual conference was organized on a regional basis and was followed up by a tree-planting project in a few libraries. UgCLA did organize a workshop for the Mbale cluster in January 2013 and held two for the Jinja cluster in September and November 2013. The Mbale workshop was funded by LitWorld, a nonprofit organization based in New York, and led to the establishment of LitClubs (i.e. reading clubs for children and teenagers) in each participating library. The Jinja workshops were funded by the African Storybook Project, and the participants focused on activities through which they could generate stories in their own libraries using Lusoga or another local language as the medium. Even without workshops, the managers of libraries in each region get to know one another at the annual conference,and it is quite common for them to visit one another’s libraries.

Grants administered

UgCLA has administered a number of grants for different donors. The libraries to receive these grants are sometimes selected by UgCLA’s Steering Committee on the basis of its knowledge of the strengths and needs of particular member institutions, but more often they are chosen through a competitive process; all interested libraries write proposals that are then assessed either by members of the Board or by the donors themselves.

The following table shows the grants administered so far. Amounts are in US dollars unless otherwise specified.