OVER 30 artists from different art centers in Kigali spent the weekend honing their skills in writing and drawing creative children’s books, at Yego Arts Centre in Nyarutarama.

The two-day training was organised by Rwanda Children’s Book Initiative (RCBI), a project of Save the Children, Rwanda. 

The artists created illustrative story books for children between the ages of 3 - 9 years to help them harness their skills and make them creative illustrators of children’s books.

During the training, the artists were taken through the stages of creating a good illustrative story book which children in the target age group can enjoy and identify with. This included the design of the book, arrangement of pages and how they can basically create a story from their creative minds to come out with a product that can be both educative and fun since children normally like a mixture of the two elements.

Sofia Cozzolino, the RBCI Manager, told The New Times that the project’s main objective is to support the development of a vibrant children’s book industry in Rwanda.

"We facilitate workshops for publishers, writers and artists to encourage them to produce engaging, age-appropriate children’s books for Rwandan children. We hope that through such initiatives, we will soon see more and better quality Kinyarwanda children’s books on the market, in schools, in libraries and eventually in homes,” she said.

She added that this particular training was one of the many RCBI activities geared towards building the capacity of local artists so that they can use their skills and talents to contribute to the development of the Rwandan book sector.

Terry Van den Akker, an art education teacher from Holland and Education Advisor, Save the Children, facilitated the training session. She said that they have done similar projects with Goethe Institute and National Library Service and it was important to integrate the artists because of their talent in creating talking pictures.

Olivier Kwitonda, an artist based at Yego Arts Center, said the training programme has opened his eyes to new opportunities since he’s now going to venture into writing illustrative children’s books.

Bruce Niyonnkuru of Ivuka Arts Center challenged other organisations to come up with similar innovative programmes, observing that Rwanda has creative and talented artists who can be valuable in offering support meant to improve education standards in the country.