A Gift for Luanshya

Theresa Lungu, program manager at the Memorial Church, is helping support the library in her hometown of Luanshya in Zambia with new computers and workstations. Photo by Jeffrey Blackwell/Memorial Church Communications

By Jeffrey Blackwell
Creative and Communications Lead
Memorial Church of Harvard University

Theresa Lungu loved walking on the bumpy dirt road to the tiny municipal library in Luanshya, almost four miles from her home in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia. She was only 7 but could borrow two books at a time. "Three Billy Goats Gruff," "Nancy Drew Mysteries," "Treasure Island," she gathered just about any book she could find on the shelves that piqued her interest.

“I'd get the books and go home and read the books on the same day, and then had to wait for two weeks. I pretty much read all the books in the neighborhood,” said Lungu, program manager at the Memorial Church. “I didn't come from a well-to-do family, and this was my lifeline to learning about the world."

Now, more than two decades later, Lungu is working to keep that lifeline of learning alive in her home town through a gift of computers and internet access at the library that opened her mind to the world. This summer, she cut the ribbon on The Luanshya Information and Learning Center, a new digital information and learning center at the Helen Kaunda Memorial Library. Funded by a grant Lungu received from the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust, a charitable organization in Boston that supports individuals pursuing projects that serve people in need, the project is opening a door of opportunity for residents of this struggling mining community.

“The trust believed in my vision to give free computer access and Wi-Fi to the town, specifically the young people who are stuck.” said Lungu. “Eighty percent of people between 18 and 25 in the town are neither in employment nor going to school. So, there's a lot of substance abuse happening, because a lot of these people graduate high school, but don’t know what to do next.”

  Lungu speaks about her African hometown and her efforts to keep the lifeline of information open to the residents and young people of Luanshya.   Lungu hopes the center will give young people the online tools needed to figure out the next steps in life, such as applying to colleges and national education scholarships. It will also provide members of the community an online portal to information, resources, and the world outside of Luanshya, she said.   “The center is a place where I envisioned young people would go to get information on anything. ‘I'm looking for a job, where can I go?’ ‘I'm looking for international scholarships, where can I go?’” Lungu said. “I also want this center to be a place where people can tap into local expertise. For example, we are having a workshop on basic computer skills, like how to open an email address.”   The Luanshya Information and Learning Center was officially opened in a civic ceremony attended by local leaders June 21. The computer resource center replaced an unused periodical room at the library. The grant allowed Lungu to purchase a dozen new computers, new work stations and chairs, and internet service for the center.   Mayor Charles Mulenga told the local newspaper at the ribbon-cutting ceremony that the center will help the community embrace global digital information trends.   “What we are witnessing here marks the beginning of creating a new generation of boundary breakers, a new generation of young people who have one common mission to help change the future of our town for the better using limitless access to knowledge…from the confines of the Helen Kaunda Memorial Library,” he said.   The center is dedicated to Lungu’s parents, who encouraged her and her siblings to pursue their education. Her mother, Theresa Sakala Lungu left school in the eighth grade to marry. Her father only made it to the fourth grade.   Her mother took night school classes later in life to become a secretary at a local mining company. She died in 2021. Her father, Stephen Paul Lungu, was a local laborer. He died in 2022. Together, the couple raised 8 children, 5 who died during AIDS epidemics that have devastated Zambia and other African nations since the mid-1980s.   “Typically, in Zambia, a lot of young girls are raised ready to be wives and mothers,” Lungu said. “But my mom was totally against that. She was all about, ‘You need an education. You need an education. I don't want you to be like me.’”   Local young people receive computer training at the The Luanshya Information and Learning Center. Photo courtesy of Theresa Lungu.   Traveling from Boston back to her home town and cutting the ribbon on the new center in the company of family and friends was a culmination of a 20-year effort to help support a community institution that gave Lungu hope as a child. She began collecting and sending books to the library in 2003, eventually creating an organization called Books for Zambia.   But there are still more critical goals to reach, Lungu said. The library, which opened in 1965 following Zambia’s independence from the United Kingdom, is nearly 60 years old and is need of repair. Many of the windows are broken, the floor is a patchwork of missing and crumbling tiles, and the electrical system is outdated and inadequate for the needs of the community.   “The next step is to restore the entire Luanshya Library,” she said. “My dream, my goal is to have this place be a community hub where people can come for any information they are looking for. So, it’s very important that we continue to restore this library and give it back to the community as a community center, and a place of hope.”