Foreword by ibby president, Peter Schneck

Lebanon:

The section's activities include library distribution to needy schools; a successful bibliotherapy project on the management behaviour of traumatized children of war; work that brings storybooks into the Civic Education course offered on the secondary level; organizing a national week for the promotion of reading; and the organization of a reading competition in elementary schools.

Lithuania:

In June 2007 the section organized a very successful conference / seminar and exhibition on Swiss children’s literature, dedicated to the anniversary of Johanna Spyri, author of Heidi.

Malaysia:

The section organized the Asia Pacific Conference on Children Book Publishing: 1-3 July 2008, as part of the IBBY-Yamada programme. Other successful activities include: the celebration of ICBD co-organized by Selangor State Library, and on a federal level, celebrated ICBD in conjunction with the KL International Book Fair 2008 with different activities.

Mexico:

Four more Bunkos were opened during the reporting period, two of them in rural, marginalized municipalities in the states of Zacatecas and Chiapas. The other two were opened in Mexico City, one in a rehabilitation centre for under-age offenders and the last in one of IBBY Mexico facilities. In addition twelve Bunkos were placed inside school shelters that support the local Indian population. The reading promotion project Nostotros entre libros (Us among books) uses volunteer participation. Starting the semester 2008-2009 IBBY Mexico has 750 volunteers, who will visit 15,000 children. This growth is possible since the Ministry of Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública) is supporting the project in order to run a pilot project, depending on the results this project could turn into a nationwide programme for the reading promotion policies established by the government.

Moldova:

In 2008 the My Gift to My Library campaign asked children and adults to donate new books to local public libraries. The section's project To Culture and Civilization through Reading covers a number of activities, such as meetings with writers, illustrators, translators, publishers in different cities and villages in Moldova; book donations to public and school libraries; opening of bookstores; mini book fairs in different cities of Moldova.

Mongolia:

The section annually celebrates the birthday of H.C. Andersen with a play written for the children and competitions and in 2008 they made a CD of the stories and distributed it to the children. The section also celebrated the 100^th birthday of Astrid Lindgren. Two IBBY-Yamada workshops were successfully organized. A special tour of rock art and writing stones was organized in Western Mongolia for children, under the title: Stone page books from ancient time.

Nepal:

Under the IBBY Yamada Fund, IBBY Nepal organized a Mobile Library Programme in two districts of Nepal. The section also distributed books to village school libraries with the help of the Books for All programme.

Netherlands:

The section runs meetings, symposiums, workshops and conferences throughout the year. It also was co-organizer of the Lingen conference with participants from the Netherlands, Fryslân, Belgium and Germany. Dutch IBBY also supported international activities including financially supporting several small local school libraries in Brazil and in 2008 they donated wordless picture books to a children’s home in India.

Palestine:

As part of the IBBY Children in Crisis Fund, PBBY established two children’s libraries in Gaza where they are also training librarians in the use of bibliotherapy.