Traveling Library: Sharing with the family

This year Puerta Abierta Atitlán is celebrating 15 years of service in the Atitlán community!

Join us as we walk down memory lane and share our stories of providing a dignified and meaningful education within our community.

Creative books!

In these last days of contingency and shelter at home, many of the children are at home receiving a silent, hybrid education behind their digital screens with lots and lots of sheets of homework…

Many times a large percentage of children do not have a computer and are at home helping their parents to harvest coffee, do beadwork, take care of their siblings or fetch firewood. In this way they generate a little income and get food to sustain themselves during the week.

This has led me to reflect on all the children who do not have opportunities, who despite their confinement continue to imagine and create in the safety of their homes, being “CHILDREN” themselves.

For this reason, in our community program Biblioteca Movil we are promoting opportunities to reach all the children in the community. We have prepared alternatives so that everyone can have access to books and materials right in their homes.

Every morning as I open the doors of the library, I feel many emotions as I prepare the books and the traveling bags to send them to families and community groups in my community.

In special bags I prepare many pieces of paper, roll up folds of paper and then tie them with a string and send them to their homes. This way the children can play with their families when they do their connection activities after sharing the story.

Another part of my daily activities is to select my books to share in my virtual story hours called “Canastita de Cuentos”. We broadcast this program every Wednesday at 3:00 p, on Facebook Live, where all the families connect for story time and entertainment at home.

One of my memories this month is watching story time with preschool students making tortillas out of corn dough. Earlier I was telling them the story of “The Tortilla Runner by Scarlet Narciso” a Peruvian story that resembles our community including the domestic animals we can see in our community.

During the class each student had the sensation of touching, feeling and playing with the dough as we set out to make tortillas using our hands to make the tortillas. Through the virtual screens I could see the smiles of families and moms helping to make tortillas with their children.

It is incredible how stories make our imagination fly, connecting us with our realities. It is touching to see that through reading many of the families have the opportunity to forget a little bit about their busy schedules and recreate themselves in the connecting activities that our storybooks generate in the community.

I will continue to do more actions for my community and for all the children of the world, because despite the confinement of the pandemic, the Mobile Library still continues to travel through time and space.

Thank you so much!

#Education, #TravelingLibrary