On the 31st of May the Library of Punta Banco project was invited to move into the village clinic building. This structure was only being used once a month when the doctors come and once a year when the dentists come. With the help of the local ladies, we cleaned up the location and moved all our supplies. This was the start of our more expanded vision for the community.
The building is big and offers us room to have many things happening at once. We invited the adults to come and check out books to read and to sign up for computer classes.
The library runs on donations and funds raised from the sale of used clothes. We have been blessed by the generosity of people willing to support our project.
With these funds we have built 3 large book cabinets and the computer desks. All the labor to build these necessary items was also donated.
Now there are 9 computers for the village to use. We teach computer fundamentals using games. Giving everyone internet access opens the WORLD to them. Classes are given for adults and children to better prepare them to use the net and all it offers.
All of this began on October 19th, 2009 in the school lunchroom with only 2 boxes of books and materials. We set out to create a new resource in the village of Punta Banco. We have around 15-32 kids that visit regularly.
Every week we offer coloring, drawing, reading books with our book club (free ice cream cone given as a reward), “picture dictionary” (cutting pictures from magazines and sticking them into a notebook and writing the words in Spanish and English next to it, thus creating their own personal dictionary) and “bingo”, which of course they love the most, because they can win prizes. The bingo-cards have pictures instead of numbers. By playing Bingo the students learn the English name of the item pictured.
Once in a while we offer something special. Once we showed a BBC documentary with a projector. We will continue to look for special things to share.
We are always looking for volunteers and that can take many forms. Are you skilled at art? Can you read a book in Spanish? How about music? We welcome anything you would like to share. Tourists have come to the library to speak with the children about where they are from. We had a couple come and speak about a trip they took to Morocco. We went on line and found coloring pages from Morocco and the couple showed their photos of the trip. That day we all took a trip to Morocco. It is as easy as that!
The Library is open Mondays from 1-4, Wednesdays 1-4 and Saturday from 12-4.
You can find info and updates at: http://www.bibliotecapuntabanco.org. Also you can became a friend of the Library at Facebook at Friends of bibilotecapuntabanco. If you are visiting the area you can call Sassy at (506) 2776-2073.
0 comments:
Post a Comment