We recently delivered a range of children’s books to the Cherbourg Mobile Library in Queensland. Cherbourg is an Indigenous community with half of its 1300 people being under the age of 19 according to the last census.

The Cherbourg Mobile Library travels the town after school and currently services about 60 homes on a constant route. This involves parents, carers and children from those houses taking books and giving back the ones they had from the week before. Other people hail down the library car as it drives past to ask for books and are never refused.

The mobile library initially targeted parents in order to get them reading to their young children but grew to include primary school aged children and now, more and more teenagers aged under 15 are taking part.

This library is part of the Barambah Parental and Community Engagement (PaCE) programme, which aims to improve educational and life outcomes for Cherbourg residents and those with close links to the community. Funded by the Australian Federal Government, PaCE takes a whole-of-community approach when it carries out consultation to improve student school attendance, education and job outcomes.