Foreword by ibby president, Peter Schneck

Colombia:

1. Reading in Family: IBBY Colombia continues to work on this programme, which invites parents to read with their children from the time they are born. To date they distributed more than 3,000 reading kits. The section has also created two other projects in connection with the main programme. Timely Time to Read where collections of books, purchased by SDIS, a public institution in Bogotá, are distributed to children in kindergartens from low-income families. The other new project is The Reading Party, developed with the ICBF, governmental organization, which reaches 3,800 children between 0 and 6 years, in 19 care centres. In both projects there is a major element of further training.

2. Palabrario: created in September 2006, is a project addressed to teachers, parents and children in the first three grades of elementary education to promote reading and writing. The section works in alliance with two other foundations (Corona and Genesis), and the Universidad the Antioquia. Between 2006 and 2008 17,500 students, 454 teachers, and 24 educative centres in five towns benefited from the project.

3. Bibloestaciones (Book-stations): these six very small public libraries opened to the public in March 2008 and have become very popular among the users of the massive public system of transport of the Colombia’s capital and have 8,000 active users.

4. Assessment Committees: Fundalectura leads three interdisciplinary and inter-institutional assessment committees, assessing both fiction and non-fiction for young people. Around 65 people participate in these weekly committees; they read an average of 1,000 books per year.
Croatia:

IBBY Croatia listed their most successful activities as their international conferences and publishing the proceedings afterwards, the Croatian Biennial of Illustration 2008 and their national reading promotion competitions for children.

Cyprus:

In January each year IBBY Cyprus organizes a New Year meeting of members and friends. In March 2008, they organized a literary evening in connection with the presentation of four children’ s literature books that was honoured by the Cyprus Ministry of Education. In April 2008 the section organized a series of activities in Nicosia and Larnaka for ICBD, including two storytelling events for children by the well-known Greek storyteller Agni Sroumpouli.

Egypt:

2007-2008 IBBY Egypt continued to develop their project Read to your child, which is now part of the Reading for all national campaign.

Greece:

Greek IBBY annually celebrates ICBD with meetings with authors, an official celebration and cooperation with national media. The books submitted for Greek IBBY's awards are donated to remote libraries, schools and communities in non-privileged areas, hospitals, and local libraries that suffered from fires of 2007.

Iceland:

In 2007 IBBY Iceland awarded the first Sögusteinn children's book prize and published a calendar depicting books by the winner (Sigrún Eldjárn) that was distributed to all second grade classrooms in Iceland.

India:

The section's storytelling activities at the AWIC children’s libraries and in schools, as well as the programmes organised for special and disadvantaged children are constantly well received.