1. The Burt Award for African Literature

 In 2007 CBP in collaboration with CODE with support of Mr. William Burt launched the Burt Award for African Literature writing Competition. Writers were to write novels in English with the aim of supporting and motivating the development of supplementary reading materials for a critical stage of learning the transition period between Kiswahili and English medium instruction. The writing competition was conducted in English for the noble reason for helping both primary school youth and secondary school adolescents to prepare themselves well for higher stages of education.
Writers were given eight months to prepare the manuscripts. After which the manuscripts submitted were read by a team of judges and the best three manuscripts were selected. The following are the winners.

1. Tree land: The land of Laughter by Mukama Mwijarubi.
2. The Best is Yet to Come by Asungishe Kayombo
3. A Hero’s Magic by Ambani Guyi.

After receiving the Awards the winners said the following:

“ The challenge ahead of me is continuing writing so as to motivate  people develop culture of reading, thus gaining skills from books” (M. Mwijarubi)

“I am proud to be the first runner-up in this competition and I have  a dept to the people of Tanzania” (A. Kayombo)

“I would like to see young men and women finishing higher education with coluorful academic performance attained through reading books”. (A. Guyi)

The winners were awarded the total of Tsh 25 millions during the Pan African Reading for All Conference organized in August, 2009. The manuscripts were tendered and the publishers who won the tender are now working on publishing the same. The book will be ready by end of March, 2010.

2. Workshop for Writers

CBP organized a writer’s workshop from the 7th -10th December, in response to the recommendations of the judges of the first Burt Award Writing Competition where it was suggested that CBP organize a workshop for Tanzanian writers for facilitating creative writing skills. The workshop was very well attended by 24 participants and was facilitated by Ms Hadley Dyer a Canadian writer and editor and Ms Lilian Tindyebwa a member of Femrite, Uganda and also a writer.

Topics presented were:

> An Introduction to young adult Literature
> Topics that interest 12-18 age group
> Different types of stories for the age 12-18
> Different approaches to writing stories
> Writing from a child/teenager’s point view
> Creating Characters for your story
> Examples of Published writing that capture a child or teenager perspective
> Plot and motivation for the story
> Story writing methods
> Elements of style on your story
> Examples of common weaknesses in writing and how to fix them

The workshop was very well received and enjoyed. Most of the participants appreciated CBP efforts to train Tanzanian writers. The following were comments raised by the participants:

1.  “After attending the workshop I feel that I can write a child story in English” By the Illustrator who attended the workshop.
2. The workshop has enlightened up my writing skills.
3. More workshops should be conducted to reinforce writing skills of the budding writers and it should involve many people even those from upcountry.
4. Participants should be issued certificates of attendance.
5. I thought being an author  is taking a pen and a notebook and  start to write but it is more than that and I got to know them from the workshop.