Goal: avoid or reduce educational backlog and provide children with extracurricular moments to develop their Dutch.
Challenge: do children find their way to the library and do we reach the children who are most in need of this support? It seeks to minimize these barriers by advertising at schools and asking teachers to redirect children towards to the language-library so as to stimulate children with the most needs as much as possible. Children regularly visit with their class, so they usually know the way.
The operation is also free to keep the threshold as low as possible.

Children from Greater Asse who have difficulties learning Dutch and are willing to practice during their spare time; volunteers and teachers who can borrow material to make their lessons as 'child-friendly' and understandable as possible.

Every Wednesday and Saturday two volunteers run the language-library. They lend games, books,... and/or support the children to practice their Dutch.
The children/volunteers/teachers/... who borrow from the language-library may do so for free for four weeks.
Every three months all volunteers come together to evaluate the operation, inform the coordinator of any obstacles, to make proposals for renewal,...

Children are encouraged to practice and hear Dutch outside school hours in a fun way (through games, films, books...). Thus their school backlog is reduced.

The language-library has been around for over five years, and may be considered a successful project. Several children or other interested persons pass by weekly and the individual half hours are almost always full.
Children and parents often tell us how much they appreciate this project.

The Language-library started in 2007 with a grant from the Fondation Roi Baudouin. Then it received a budget from the Council of Asse. The past three years the youth service of Asse received support from the Flemish government for projects on socially vulnerable children and youths. Part of this support has been used to finance the project.