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.
