Projects

The Lumina Residency Programme

This is designed as an exchange programme involving scholars, writers, artists and talented people of different nationalities to take up residency provided by The Lumina Foundation for the purpose of sharing talents, experiences, knowledge, cultures and views in a place where they will be sequestered to create meaningfully without distraction.

We are liaising with notable universities, corporate institutions and several bodies and agencies in this regard.

Creative people from different parts of the world can take up residency with us for maximum of three months and minimum of two weeks. Entries are judged and selections made by a panel of distinguished and experienced intellectuals.

Call for residency is published in The Lumina Foundation’s website:
www.luminasoyinkaprize.com

Lumina mobile library scheme
In furtherance of our fight against ignorance, (illiteracy) which we believe is behind most of the problems we are experiencing in Africa today, problem of political apathy, injustice, gross corruption, deceit, villainy, name it,  we realized that we have to find a way to make people read again. There are so many people, children, especially the very poor ones who do not have access to books. Some are so poor, it’s unbelievable, but they are so poor they can’t buy books. When you think of the fact that abject poverty really exists and is quite predominant here even in the midst of plenty, existing side by side with the obscenely rich, it hurts even to talk about it. But we had to something. We have to figure out a way to take books to the wretched of the earth, those who truly can’t afford what they need.

That’s how we started the Lumina mobile Library scheme. We take books to children, people at Ajegunle, Ijora, in remote schools where people could not even afford their school text books. We take the mobile library to them. They borrow our books and return them so they could borrow more. We formed reading clubs in schools and things are going pretty well. I remember the first time we took these books to indigent pupils, I sobbed as they grabbed the books hungrily. Oh yes, they are hungry to read. And we discovered also that they are responsible. They return our books in record time. This is also a project that has touched me a great deal. It renews my commitment to making people see how much they can gain from reading, from sharing in the experiences of so many people in the books they read.