News September 2010 [update]

[UPDATE]

Our computer room is ready! 

 In the front you can see one part of the computerbooths, the other part is being installed in the computer room in the background. Also the book cabinet has doors now, so the books are protected from the humidity. 

 Kim, Marcos and Gabriel installing the booths.

Ready for use and the kids are happy!

Wow this looks pretty official does't it!

Thanks to everybody that helped us making this happen, this is so wonderfull.
Please also follow us on twitter (click the twitter button on this page)

News September 2010

Hello again everybody. It's been a while. Sassy went to the States for a few weeks and returned with several new laptops. Since the last update there also have been two more clothes sales which raised about $400 and we had a new book cabinet built. Thanks again to everybody that helps make this project possible! You can also follow us on facebook and twitter now! Please contact Sassy if you have any ideas or want to support our little library (+ 506 2776 2107)

The new book cabinet, it even has a fan!!!

To stimulate reading: the 'Club de Libros'

Sassy and Kendi @ la biblioteca

News May 2010

New building, finally!

We attended another general meeting with the locals in May and the idea of moving the library to the old teachers house was an issue that rose a lot of discussion. It looked like it wasn't going to happen, especially not that particular day, so we called another meeting for the week after to talk about it more. In the meantime it was decided that it wouldn't be happening in the old teachers house, but then one of the local people opted we could use the clinic, which is only used once a month when the doctors are working there, and once or twice a year the dentists who visit the village use it. So that was it and on the 31st of May, Sassy cleaned up the place and moved all of our books and materials to the new building, with the help of one of the local women. The new library is a fact, we now have one large room with two tables, so we can easily work in two different groups, a separate room, to be a computer room as soon as possible, a storage room and a book cabinet. Yeah!

Sales
We had another clothingsale on the 29th of May, at a fundraiser for the local school, where there was soccer, local food and bingo. The library donated a surprise box as a prize to the bingo and we sold a lot of clothes again and raised $200.
The next sale will be at the Tuna Festival in Pavones on the 12th of June. This is a fundraising festival to the benefit of the organisation that tries to stop a planned tuna farm off the coast of Punta Banco. The money we raise with this clothing sale will therefore partly go to this organisation and partly to the library. If you have any clothes donations, please contact Sassy (tel. 2776 2073)

Goodbye Britta and welcome Charlotte
Britta left Punta Banco to go back to live in Holland again, so unfortunately had to leave the library behind. “I had a really great time working with the children of Punta Banco, it was a very special experience and very rewarding. Of course I will help as much as I can from Holland, by raising money and sending materials. Thanks a lot to Sassy, it was a pleasure working with you because of of your positive energy. I will miss you all and I hope to be back within a couple of years”.
Fortunately we can welcome a new volunteer to the library project; Charlotte. She just arrived in Punta Banco and will be living here for the next two years to manage Rancho Burica and volunteer at la biblioteca. Welcome Charlotte!

New load of books
At this moment, there is a new load of books and colouringbooks on the way from San Jose to Punta Banco. These books are all brand new, bought with money donated and raised with the cloting sales! Update of the booklist will follow as soon as possible.

Volunteers
We get more and more help with our little project, donations in the form of money, clothes, books and materials. Via via we now have connections with private schools in other parts of the country that are willing to help and the number of helping contacts keeps growing. Facebook is also a big help in communicating about what we do and in having more and more connections. Become friends of Biblioteca Punta Banco on Facebook and join the group Friends of Biblioteca Punta Banco! Also the locals are now taking part in the library, mothers helping out with art projects and reading to the kids and older kids are helping out the younger ones on the computers. There are plans to make the library into a multifunctional communitycenter, which will be possible if the help we get keeps on growing like it has been up untill now.

Thanks
Again, many thanks to everybody that has helped us out in any way to achieve what we have achieved!

News April 2010

Donations
We had a lot of donations in the last two months, from money to brand new surfclothes and secondhand clothes to sell, to art and learning supplies from a school in San Jose, to two secondhand laptops.

Playing and learning on the computer
The kids were so excited they could work on the computer. Some of the kids never touched a computer in their lives and most of them definitely don't have one at home. At school there is a laptop that the children are not allowed to touch. There are games that teach the children how to use the computer. They can make drawings and play “educational” games. Most of the kids that know how to read can already use the computer independently and especially the younger ones are so proud of themselves when they find out they are able to play games on the computer too!

Building
We still don't have any news on moving to another building, so we are still in the lunchroom. The school committee talked about the topic of the other building in their last meeting, but couldn't decide anything because there were too little members at that meeting. Once we know about their decision we can either move, look for other options or try to find a way to integrate the library permanently into the lunchroom and start building bookshelves.

Clothes Sale
We are planning on another clothes sale on April 11th in front of the school in punta Banco
Be there for nice brand new and second hand clothing and if you would like to donate some clothes to sell please contact us via mail bibliotecapuntabanco@yahoo.com or telephone (+506) 2776-2223 (Britta @ Rancho Burica)

Volunteering
As we mentioned in all of the newsletters, we get lots of donations and we couldn't do without them. But we feel we would like to do more with all these donations we get. We lack time to do everything we would like to do. Therefore we would like to add at least one other libraryday a week and we could really use some help with that. We could use 2-4 volunteers to be able to give the kids more frequent and more personal attention, like reading books to them, helping them on the computer, doing little art/craft/music/whatever projects with them and just helping out to make it a fun afternoon.
Are you interested or do you know someone who might be interested in volunteering? Do you speak at least some basic Spanish and English? Please sent us an email bibliotecapuntabanco@yahoo.com also if you don't live around here but are interested in or planning on visiting Punta Banco!

P.O. Box
If you have anything you want to send us by mail please send it to:

Biblioteca Punta Banco / Rancho Burica
Apt. 131
CP 8201 Golfito
Costa Rica

Please send us an librarypuntabanco@yahoo.com if you have sent something to this P.O. Box so we ask for it at the post office.

Thanks
Of course lots and lots of thanks to everybody that is and has been supporting us.

Sassy, Britta and the community of Punta Banco

List of books we have

(A) = Adult, (BL) = bilingual, (E) = English

(A) El diario de Ana Frank – Ana Frank
(A) Siddharta – Herman Hesse
(A) Yoga – Tara Fraser
(BL) Are you my mother? - Eastman
(BL) Buenos dias, buenas noches – Michael Grejniec
(BL) Catch me if you can – Bernard Most
(BL) Diggerpig and the turnip - Caron Lee Cohen
(BL) Goldilocks and the three bears – Candice Ransom
(BL) Perro grande, perro pequeno – Eastman
(BL) Piggy in my pocket - Hui-Mei Pan
(BL) Rapunzel – Catherine McCafferty
(BL) Rumpelstiltskin – Xavier
(BL) Sylvester & Tweety, Curse of the Nile
(BL) Sylvester & Tweety, The jewel robbery
(BL) Sylvester & Tweety, The London looter
(BL) The gingerbread man – Catherine McCafferty
(BL) The little red hen – Carol Ottolenghi
(BL) The princess and the pea
(BL) The twins and the time machine – Rabley and Martin
(E) Accidentally Friends – Lisa Papademetriou
(E) Animals in their homes – Anita Ganeri
(E) Guide to Mexico – Top Secret Adventures
(E) I wonder if dragons are real – Donati/Barnes
(E) I wonder why fish don't drown – Donati/Schulz
(E) I wonder why skunks are so smelly – De Ford/Gonzales
(E) Mine's the best – Crosby Bonsall
(E) Now I'm reading starter set
(E) Prehistoric Worlds - Discovery
(E) Sheltie and the snowpony – Peter Clover
(E) Tammy Turtle – Suzanne Tate
Adelante Bananas – Nancy Parent
Bizcocho enceuntra un amigo – Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Cocori – Joaquin Gutierrez
Delphines y ballenas – Larousse
Despereaux – Kate DiCamillo
Diccionario Ingles, Espanol-Ingles, English-Spanish
El gato con botas/Los tres cerditos
El osito polar y el gran globo – Hans de Beer
El osito polar y el ren – Hans de Beer
El osito polar y su neuva amiga – Hans de Beer
El pez arco iris al rescate – Marcus Pfister
El Pirata Garrapata – Juan Munoz Martin
El principito – Antoine de Saint- Exupery
El Rey Midas
En la casa de mis padrinos – Suzy Blackaby
Gran atlas geografico universal de centro america
Happy Feet el pinguino – Grupo Norma
Harry Potter y el caliz de fuego – JK Rowling
Harry Potter y la camara secreta – JK Rowling
Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal – JK Rowling
Harry Potter y las reliquias de la muerte – JK Rowling
Jorge el curioso – H.A. Rey
Jorge el curioso y la pinata – H.A. Rey
La Familia del Futuro – Grupo Norma
La naranja mas dulce – Nancy Parent
La voz del caracol – Rodolfo Dada
Los cinco patitos – Pamela Paparone
Los cuentos de mi Tia Panchita – Carmen Lyra
Mi Madrina – Carlos Luis Fallas
No, Tito, no! - Claire Masurel
Nuestra geniales orejas – Shirley Frederick
Pantalones cortos – Lara Rios
Pantalones largos – Lara Rios
Ramona empieza el curso – Beverly Cleary
Ramona la chinche – Beverly Cleary
Silabario Castellano
Te presento al mamut – Vivian French

News Feb 2010

Here's another update of how things are going with the biblioteca de Punta Banco:

Clothing Sale
First of all the clothing sale we held in the beginning of December. That went really well. We had lots of clothes donated by tourists and some of the expats that live around here. Even though it felt to us that we didn't get as many customers as we expected, we raised about $400 that weekend!

Activities
We did a lot of fun stuff with the kids in December, like baking X-mas cookies, making X-mas decorations, organizing an afternoon with activities that all revolved around Morocco (because a friend who lives there visited).
In January we returned to the usual schedule of reading, coloring, working on the picture-dictionaries and playing bingo. Last week we could add watching kids videos in English (Diego, Backyardigans, Blues Clues) to that since someone sent us a whole bunch of DVD s and we bought a DVD/boombox with a screen to watch them.

Location
We are still located in the lunchroom of the school, but we have been talking to the people of the school committee since the school has a house that formerly was meant to house the schoolteacher, but is not in use for that purpose at the moment. We are waiting for the committee and the teacher to make a decision about whether we can use this space for the library. Since the summer-holidays are here (and we are in Costa Rica) this is taking a while. We'll wait and see and meanwhile the library will still be in the school lunchroom Mondays from 1 to 4 o'clock.

Donations
In the meantime we get more and more donations: books, art supplies, CD s, DVD s, clothes and money. By now we have about sixty children s books, but of course we can always use more, so keep on sending them! I will publish a list of the books we have on this blog. We are also extending our book collection with adult books in Spanish, of which we have about ten at the moment. These books we are lending out, where as all the children s books are to be read only in the library. We would also like to add learning on the computer to our activities, so if anybody has a working laptop that he/she would be willing to donate, please send us an email!

Thank you, thank you, thank you again to everybody that supported us by sending or bringing books, supplies or clothes and/or volunteered during clothing sale or library days!

Sassy, Britta and the community of Punta Banco.

the start

The start
We had a meeting with the locals in the beginning of October, where we told them about the plan, let them know it wouldn't be needing any financial support from them (since the meetings already are mostly about getting some money together for school, church or sport committee, and the people here really don't need another burden), asked if they agreed on our plans and what space we might use. It was decided we could use the kitchen/lunchroom of the school, because there are big pick-nick tables with benches and all of the kids could fit in this room.

The library
On the 19th of October 2009 we started the first libraryday. The kids were excited and also testing us a little bit: “What exactly is in here for us?” After 4 weeks they seemed to have figured it out and seem to be very happy with it. We mostly have around 15 kids that are coming. Up until now we had 6 librarymondays from 1-4 p.m. and every week we offer them coloring, drawing, reading books, “picture dictionary” (cutting pictures from magazines and sticking them into a notebook and writing the words in Spanish and English next to it) and “bingo”, which of course they love the most, because they can win prizes. The bingo-cards have pictures in stead of numbers and by playing they learn the English words of the things showed in the pictures. Once in a while we will be offering something special: once we showed a BBC documentary with a projector and we are planning on baking Christmas cookies with the kids soon. We also get tourists that volunteer; this week a couple brought their music instruments and sang with the kids and a lady brought materials to make Christmas decorations which she will help us do next week.

The clothing sale
Since lots of people donated clothes to sell, we organized a sale in November. It attracted most people from the village and we made about $225 with it. Although we are very happy with that, we learned from it that we better do a sale when something else is going on in the village to have more buyers, because we have tons of clothes left and more is coming! Next sale will be on the 5th and 6th of December, when there will be a soccer tournament and a fiësta in the village.

The future
Also lots of books and art materials were donated, so everything is almost bursting out of the 3 large plastic boxes we use to store all the materials. We have to carry the boxes back and forth between the storage and the “library” every week. We are planning on offering at least one more weekly library day, and hopefully more in the future, so it would be nice to find our own space then, where we can store the materials properly and permanently. Hopefully more about that soon.

Thanks
We would like to thank everybody that donated materials, clothes, money and time!

Sassy, Britta and the kids from Punta Banco.