libraries are community
Who we are
We are a grassroots nonprofit that creates libraries where children feel they belong.
lilipad creates library spaces and storytelling programmes for children who are often pushed to the margins. Rooted in culture and care, all our initiatives are meant to support emotional well-being and help children rebuild confidence and a new sense of possibility.
What we do
Access alone is not enough.
Libraries need people, relationships, and time.
That's why for nearly a decade, lilipad has focused on building partnerships in places where children are most excluded from cultural life: refugee accommodations, child protection centres and community centres in underserved neighbourhoods.
Our Impact
Your support helps ensure children continue to have access to spaces where their language, curiosity, and imagination are taken seriously.
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Libraries embedded in the communities where children live, inside refugee accommodations, child protection centres, and neighbourhood spaces. A large majority remain active over many years, becoming stable, familiar places where children feel genuine belonging.
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Children have ongoing access to books and learning materials in spaces close to where they live. Some return over long periods, while others encounter the library during shorter stays. This helps us have both depth of engagement and wide reach over time.
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Our libraries always try to reflect the native languages of the children. Through multilingual and bilingual books, we support literacy while affirming cultural identity, ensuring children can recognise themselves and feel a sense of pride thanks to the stories around them.
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These libraries are supported by a consistent, trusted adult presence. lilipad librarians read with children, support everyday activities, and create continuity - helping transform the library into a space children return to and feel comfortable in.
Where we work
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Why libraries?
Most of the children who come to our libraries have never been inside a library before. Not because libraries don't exist where they live, often they do, but because a library that isn't yours yet might as well not exist at all.
Reaching children in temporary housing, in shelters, in the middle of displacement, requires more than a building with an open door. It requires the library to come to them in their languages, in spaces they already occupy, at a moment when stability of any kind is rare.
What makes libraries worth bringing, specifically, is harder to articulate than it sounds. A library is not a classroom. It doesn't ask for attention or progress. It simply makes things available without condition, and that unconditionality is entirely new for some children. To be in a space that expects nothing, judges nothing, and still offers everything it has is not a small thing.
"At the library I feel real calmness. There’s no chaos or noise. You can read in peace. Every time I go to the library I find out some new information. I arrive empty-handed, and I come out with something new."
Testimonial collected from a teenage girl resident of the Child Protection Centre Abdesslam Bennani (Casablanca, Morocco)
Community & events
Donations support libraries, librarians, and cultural work - from shared reading and everyday library life to workshops and public events.
Your support helps ensure children continue to have access to spaces where their language, curiosity, and imagination are taken seriously.
Our partners
lilipad is proud to work alongside trusted partners
We are deeply grateful to work alongside organisations that value long-term commitment, cultural relevance, and trust - and who recognise that meaningful work with children is built over time.
Donate
Keep our libraries running
Your support helps ensure children continue to have access to spaces where their language, curiosity, and imagination are taken seriously.
