First Lady Reopens Modern Library at President’s Village in Port Glaud
PORT GLAUD, Seychelles —
Mrs Veronique Herminie, the First Lady, on Tuesday reopened a fully refurbished children’s library at the President’s Village in Port Glaud, the residential and care centre for vulnerable children run by the National Council for Children. The six-month renovation was financed by the Constance Ephelia Resort, with works estimated at between SCR 250,000 and SCR 300,000.
The reopening was attended by the chief executive of the National Council for Children (NCC), Ms Yasmin Umarji, the director of the President’s Village, Mr Ted Arrisol, and the general manager of Constance Ephelia, Mr Stéphane Duchenne. The resort’s sponsorship also covered four new laptops that were donated to the library on the day, replacing the older desktop computers that the institution had relied on for schoolwork.
The President’s Village is Seychelles’ flagship residential care institution for children removed from unsafe family circumstances. It sits in the Port Glaud district on the western coast of Mahé, and has long operated a small library and study room as part of its educational support for residents. In remarks at the reopening, the First Lady thanked Constance Ephelia for the partnership and asked the children to make full use of the new space. Ms Umarji said the refurbished library would help the institution move to a more structured reading-and-research programme for school-aged children, with dedicated hours each evening and at weekends.
The Constance Ephelia contribution goes beyond a one-off refurbishment. Under the arrangement, the resort will deploy staff volunteers twice a year to run reading sessions with the children, and will provide a small annual maintenance budget to keep the library’s equipment current. Mr Duchenne said the partnership would be evaluated after twelve months and that Constance Ephelia expected to extend it if the children’s engagement with the programme grew.
The new laptops were handed over by the resort’s representatives in a brief ceremony that was followed by a tour of the library. The library now has a small reference section, a children’s fiction section, a study area with the donated laptops, and a quiet reading corner. NCC staff said the next step would be to enrol the children with the Seychelles National Library Services so that they could borrow books through the national inter-library loan system.
The reopening is one of several donations and infrastructure projects that the President’s Village has received this year. In June, a Chinese medical team launched an Island Outreach programme at the institution, delivering free paediatric consultations to children in its care. The National Council for Children strategic plan sets out its residential care mandate, with the President’s Village accommodating about 50 children at any one time and an average stay of 18 months before reintegration with extended family or transfer to longer-term foster arrangements.
Constance Ephelia, the five-star resort on the western coast of Mahé, operates a corporate social responsibility programme that pairs its guests with community institutions across the Port Glaud district, including the small primary school at Port Glaud and the village’s elderly care home. The library project is the first concrete outcome of a new three-year partnership with the National Council for Children announced in April. The resort’s general manager described the partnership as “a small but durable contribution to the wider education system” and said staff had already begun volunteering in two weekend reading sessions a month.
The NCC said it would publish a six-month progress report on the library in February, covering attendance, reading levels of resident children using the facility, and use of the donated laptops for schoolwork. The report will also inform the council’s annual funding request to the Ministry of Finance, which currently contributes about 60 percent of the institution’s operating budget through a combination of grants and donor coordination. The First Lady’s office, which has championed the President’s Village since the Herminie administration took office in October 2025, is expected to host the next donor update in September.
Sources cited: 1. National Council for Children (Seychelles), Strategic Plan 2022–2025,
