Tania Nugent: Libraries are a rare sight in Papua New Guinea. Outside the school system there are very few - a real worry in a country facing an uphill battle with literacy - a country where almost half the population over the age of 15 can't read and write. But this tiny building represents a big vision - it's a library, set up by charity organisation Buk Bilong Pikinini to get Papua New Guinea's children reading and writing one word, one page, one book at a time.

Agnes Taio - Teacher and librarian: Every day we have 60 plus children coming into the library, what we do is separate them into classes. Our first lot they come in at eight o'clock and classes finish at ten o'clock and then from ten to twelve they take the second class.

Jessica: My name is Jessica, I'm ten years old. My mummy not have enough money, so she has to send my big sister only to the school, so I comes to the library.

Agnes Taio: Place like this is very important. Like settlement people, they are not able to send their children to the bigger school, so this is their opportunity I think so they here, most of the children are coming to the library and I am happy, like they coming to the library because its free service and they get to come in and learn.

Tania Nugent: This library in the car park of the Six Mile Police Station is one of four now operating in Port Moresby, since Buk Bilong Pikinini was established in 2008. The libraries target the little kids, focusing on early childhood education - a huge issue in a place where many parents are forced to delay sending their children to school until they can afford the fees.

They've set up in places where children gather and places where children need it the most opening their first library here, in the children's HIV, TB and malnutrition ward at the Port Moresby General Hospital, for the many sick children who are in for a long stay and miss out on schooling.

Dame Carol Kidu - Community Development Minister: I think officially statistically it's about 56% of the nation literate, with almost equal male/female literacy. But this really is, it's not realistic, maybe they can sign their name that's all. It's estimated that the actual functional rate of literacy in Papua New Guinea is as low as 48%, and functional literacy as you would realise is being able to actually being able to pick up a newspaper and read it and understand it.

Even now we still have 43% of our children still not in primary school; it's starting from a very low age, so we have continuing numbers of people growing up illiterate, plus the big back log of people who are illiterate because they didn't have opportunities as well. So it leads to a lot of frustration like young people everywhere they are looking for other opportunities and so the frustration does lead to negative anti social behaviour, or self destructive behaviour.

Tania Nugent: Dame Carol Kidu has been involved in educating Papua New Guineans for decades. The school teacher turned politician is Minister for Community Development and she wants to harness the strengths of PNG's community spaces for learning.

Dame Carol Kidu: We inherited the Australian model of most things, and they're not really appropriate. In Australia people take their books back, in PNG and they walk forever and they don't come back. You end up with a library with no books.

The model that they are establishing is the model that we should be looking at for libraries in PNG. Community based. So there's community ownership.

Tania Nugent: The Red Cross Special Education Centre is where Buk Bilong Pikinini opened its second library. They've also set up libraries in the provincial capitals of Lae and Goroka. As well as funding the staff for the libraries, the charity also works hard collecting books.

Dame Carol Kidu: We can't talk about getting a literate nation unless we talk about the tools for literacy and they are having books available and that's a basic reality. In Papua New Guinea people don't have bookshelves in their homes. Only the homes of a very, very, very small minority have books in their homes, so that's again why I really encourage the concept of community learning centres that become libraries or the BBP libraries because then there are books available for community usage.

Tania Nugent: Buk Bilong Pikinini's work has been embraced by one of Papua New Guinea's most passionate readers and writers, Governor General Sir Paulius Matane.

Sir Paulius Matane -Governor-General: So far I have 45 books written and published. Not only here, but overseas as well, in Australia, India, England, in the USA.

Reading in Papua New Guinea is not our culture, we prefer to sit around the fire and talk, so we are not readers, we are talkers, we are orators, we talk a lot. But we have to learn to get away from our habits of being orators and being just speakers, we must be able to read and not only read for pleasure, which is fine also, but read to learn something for the benefit of our country.

These people started off in a little way but they are going to grow. And if they continue to do it they'll be able to meet the needs of these people who never have a chance to go to school.

Parent: Ol save kirap hariap long morning na waswas, dress up. Ol save hamamas long come long skul. (They wake up quickly in the morning, wash, dress up. They are happy to come to school.)

Library security guard: Yes, I'm very proud to be a founding member of the Buk Bilong Pikinini Library and also I get good feedback from the settlement people they live around the library.

Parent: Wanen samting teacher i toktok ol save bihanim. Mi hamamas olsem em lainim gud. Em fes taim long em long kam long skul so em liklik yet name m lainim samting nice. (Whatever the teacher tells them they follow. I'm happy because she is learning well. It her first time to come to school, she is still young but she is learning something nice.)

Madeline: My name is Madeline I'm six years old. I learn ABC!! And fruits and weather and months of the year.

Tania Nugent: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Madeline: My teachers!

Agnes Taio: In the morning I was trying to walk into the library and one child he came running and he hugged me. I said good morning student, and he said, 'oh teacher Agnes, I'm very glad, now I know my ABCD, I know 123.' Oh that child is eager to learn.

Buk Bilong Pikinini