I am excited about SELI's coming year.
The SELI Young Writers Clubs program continues to develop the literacy of upper primary and junior secondary students; for some, improving their performance on public exams and for others, revealing their new selves as authors. Their facilitators report ex-club members asking how to move forward into creative writing.
A real need exists in Sierra Leone for children's literature—good reading books. They need to be culturally relevant. As an advocate of children's literature and ex-school librarian, I make good use of SELI's children's library (see photo here)
as an inspiration for editing.
Increasingly, people in Sierra Leone are writing for children, but a good many are unable to get their work published because they lack editing support. SELI would like to provide such individualized early-stage writing guidance on drafts that such authors are considering submitting for publication. There would be no cost to the author for this service. It would be provided by email or WhatsApp, or when available, in person.
SELI is not a publisher. This editing service is intended to help point the authors' way to preparing a more successful draft (and hopefully then, more successful subsequent drafts) for submission to a children's book publisher.
So let the new year in!
