In the 1990’s, Academic deans, Sports directors, and Librarians from a group of Christian post-secondary institutions used to get together for fellowship a few times per year, often meeting at Pan African Christian College (PACC) Roysambu. They called themselves NFTC which stood for Nairobi Fellowship of Theological Colleges. In addition to the aspect of fellowship at these meetings, an inter-mural sports competition began between the schools which were then not part on any other formal league. The person who spear-headed this fellowship was the then Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic Affairs of Daystar University, Rev. Dr. Godfrey Nguru.
In 1998, Rev. Nguru left Daystar to become the principal of St. Paul’s United Theological College, and the academic heads of NFTC stopped meeting. By that time, however, the sports inter-mural was well established and has continued to function to this day. Also, the librarians decided to continue to meet. When Priscilla Kioni, librarian at NEGST, Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology became chair person, the group began meeting at NEGST in Karen and decided to change the name to CALA-K and came up with a constitution in 2002. In 2003, that constitution was further revised and submitted with an application to register as a society.
CALA-K is an acronym for Christian Association of Librarians in Africa which is a registered association. We also decided to become more than a fellowship and to include an element of training when we met. Phyllis Masso, a missionary from the US, agreed to head that up. She, along with the executive committee, plan training elements for each time CALA-K meets and also organizes for extended annual training.
In 2003, we had a two-week training held at Daystar University. The first week was for librarians who were serving as librarians but had no formal training. The second week was for those who needed to learn more computer and library automation skills. This was advertised through ACTEA who also provided partial scholarships for ACTEA member institutions. Librarians came from all over Africa for that training. Daystar’s Institute of Christian Ministries and Training (ICMT) helped to organize for the facilities. Daystar graciously let CALA-K use their well-equipped computer lab the second week at very low cost.
This training was so well received that we decided to make it an annual event. We had met at NEGST twice, the Daystar Nairobi campus once, and in 2007 at Lukenya Getaway near the Daystar University Athi River campus. We use some of our own members to facilitate the training and bring in those from outside as well.
Also, in 2003, we were able to send two of our members, Daniel Ruheni from Daystar University and Charles Nandain from Nairobi International School of Theology to the US to attend the conference of Association of Christian Librarians (ACL). This was followed by 3 weeks of mentoring by Ferne Weimer, a long-time friend of librarians in Kenya and others from Wheaton College. ACL gave a full scholarship to these men, CALA-K contributed some, and the individual institutions contributed as well.
Although that experience boosted those two librarians, giving them incredible experiences in librarianship, CALA-K decided that in the future, we would prefer to had the whole association benefit by bringing in people from the outside rather than sending a small group out. In fact, neither of those gentlemen are part of our association today. One has moved the US, and the other has started his own organization in Kenya.
In November 2004, the secretariat was officially moved to Nairobi International School of Theology (NIST) due to its central location and due to the fact that Phyllis Masso, then Chair person and head of training had an office there.