In the firm belief that books can help give children and adolescents a better quality of life, IBBY is committed to guaranteeing and defending young people’s right to access books and reading, particularly in deprived and remote areas. The organization is currently present in 82 countries around the world. All sections are committed to promoting and circulating the best children’s books, creating opportunities to make available high quality literary, artistic and popular reading matter, and stimulating research into children’s literature and publishing.
IBBY Italia
A National Section, IBBY Italia selects quality national and international books for social inclusion projects geared to promoting free access of children and young people to knowledge and learning, developing their potential and allowing them to become active members of a multicultural society. For this reason, IBBY Italy in partnership with sector professionals and experts – libraries, bookshops, institutions, associations, bodies – supports training, cultural-mediation tools, and citizenship projects to raise public awareness of the importance not only of book dissemination programmes but also of the need for community involvement.
Objectives
IBBY Italia aims to:
- ensure children and young people all over the world have access to books of high artistic and literary quality, promoting reading projects, with special attention to disadvantaged areas requiring targeted children’s literature initiatives.
Reading trains critical thinking. Not only a problem in developing countries, but illiteracy is also increasingly an issue in industrialised nations as well. - promote international cooperation and integration through children’s literature.
Books are a means of cultural and social mediation and inclusion. Providing vital insights into cultures, countries, traditions and values, they pave the way for exchange, and encouraging peace and tolerance. - stimulate the study of and research into children’s literature, how it is produced and promoted, and encourage the publication and distribution of books of artistic, literary, graphic, and editorial excellence for children and young people, especially in developing countries. IBBY is convinced that children become readers if they encounter good, engrossing books that trigger emotions and questions before the range of different human experience and artistic languages.
- support the professional and cultural training of those working with children, young people, and children’s literature on a daily basis.