Our ideas to have the very first community public library set up in Kolovai is when the Cyclone Gita damaged 85 % of all residential houses including local Primary Schools. These houses has no roof on most of them including my family house. We visited the local Free Wesylan Primary School next door and noticed there were no journal books for these children to read. Floor was very damp and all furniture were damaged. Our hearts went out to these schools and the community for what had Gita done to the community. We then decided to approach the Auckland Central Library head Office head of the Cancelation to see if they can help us starting up this project. Emails were sent out to all 57 Auckland Public Libraries by Tricia Alexander letting them know that we are setting up the very first Community Public Library in Tonga and that we will ship them over. May 2018 we started collecting books including some of the schools donating journal books as well. Now we have shipped already thousands of books and the library will be up and running OC July this year. CFR line shipping company have been very generous to us and offered to ship all our books to Tonga free of charge. Ministry of Education in Tonga offered to sign off the consignment when books arrived in Tonga. We are very happy with the generosity of the Auckland City Council, 57 Auckland Libraries Branches, Lion Internationals Ellerslie/Onehunga, Onzo bikes, Bunning Warehouse Mt Roskill, SKYTV, Sam Soane for proviting all light bulbs for the whare Library, Electrician Folau Manu and his staff for installing all the lights for us and to all branches of Auckland Libraries. Malo ‘aupito. Nga mihi nui atu.
