The Achiya Children's Library

At present, Achiya’s leading priority is the creation of a Children’s Community Library that will serve as a model for encouraging reading learning achievements and promoting inclusion and accessibility. The Library is now under construction on the third floor of Achiya’s headquarters in Bnei Brak (the headquarters was built in collaboration with the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation in 2012). There are over 76,000 children in Bnei Brak—the overwhelming majority comes from families with many children and scant resources. The Library will provide children and families with the incomparable enrichment of books and informal learning. Although there are children’s libraries in other ultra-Orthodox communities throughout Israel, Achiya’s project is the first of its kind in Bnei Brak. Children’s libraries in ultra-Orthodox communities are among the most utilized children’s libraries in Israel. The attraction of a library is all the greater in communities where electronic entertainment is off-bounds to children. Achiya’s library is being planned to respond to the reading and learning needs of the children in Bnei Brak, with a focus on promoting inclusion of children with special cognitive and developmental needs. The goal is to develop informal educational activities which will enable children with special needs to participate alongside their siblings and peers. We also plan for the Library to include innovative learning technologies and books for special needs children. The Library will also be home to a database of digitalized and print resources that might otherwise be inaccessible to parents of children with learning challenges and special needs. It is anticipated that the database will also be utilized by educators to deepen their knowledge of how to identify and respond to special needs. The Library has already earned core support from Israel’s National Insurance Institute and private philanthropists. We anticipate that the Library will be complete in January 2018. At present, we are seeking support that would be applied towards books and multimedia systems.