Re-cycling

We found a television antenna that someone had left and it occurred to us to think what use we could give it.

As the rains stopped, the birds need more drinking sources, even worse in a city like Cajamarca that is growing franticly and without green areas.

So we turned the antenna into a new drinking fountain ... but the birds do not approach it. Could it be that the antennas retain the dregs of certain television or news programs?

We will have to continue learning from the birds. And see what utility we can give to that antenna.

Visiting El Progreso

We walked along the roads of Chota, to the rural library 'El Progreso', district of Chalamarca. Although we couldn’t see our area coordinator, Rigoberto Vásquez Cubas, we did have the warm and smiling presence of Yanela, the daughter of Don Rigo, who with her usual kindness and closeness showed us the place where they have their library; and she told us that the library has a good number of readers, who arrive late in the afternoon to request the books.

Thanks to our community families and librarians, who are, remain and accompany the walk of the Network, their books, readers and readings!

Samuel in the Network

Samuel Suárez Ronay arrived in the third week of May, from Spain, to accompany us voluntarily -for the lapse of a month- in some of the many tasks that we always have in the Network, particularly in our Exchange Center.

Several months ago, Samuel contacted us requesting a period of participation with us. With nineteen years of age, we imagined that upon receiving the conditions of his volunteering, he would give up: we were very happy to know that this did not happen and Samuel joined our family with great enthusiasm.

We value a lot his contribution in the tasks entrusted to him and his willingness to integrate into the Network.

For us it is not only the incorporation of a person in the tasks to be fulfilled, but how the conception and coexistence contribute in the formation of each of us.

Our gratitude for this time shared with Samuel.

Reading for those who listen

The Community Program of the Rural Libraries Network serves 78 children with 'disabilities' in different villages in the Cajamarca Region. Our approach to Community-Based Rehabilitation focuses on the accompaniment of children and their families, their care through therapies, training for parents so that they can permanently continue to apply therapies to their children and ensuring the promotion of school inclusion.

However, the creativity of our coordinators has no limits: they organize walks with children, make nurseries and plant trees in communities, organize training for teachers, fight for the installation of Municipal Offices for Attention to People with Disabilities (OMAPED), support in family gardens and also promote reading for children with projected capacities.

This last activity-reading with and for children with disabilities-has increased a lot in recent weeks as we have an endowment of story books from the Network. Now, all families have at home four fascicles of stories from the collection "... and other stories".

Seeing parents with their books in their hands, reading to their children who often can only listen, encourages us a lot. What new magical worlds will be opened to the children of the Community Program!

Our thanks to the Exchange Center of the Network.

A coming and going of letters and stories

Thanks to the voluntary and committed work of our coordinators, our books are circulating through almost all the provinces of Cajamarca. The exchange of books is one of the central axes of the Network of Rural Libraries, because with it we achieve that many more villagers, girls, boys, young people, men, women, have access to reading.

The exchange is the circulation of letters, stories and learning possibilities. This movement of books, that occurs due to the interaction between readers, coordinators, librarians and the Central Office, manages to establish a strong link between the reading needs and tastes of our readers, the solidarity spirit of the coordinators - that go from library to library collecting the books that have already been read or require change because of use or otherwise; the librarians in charge of the register of readers, promoting books and readings and receiving demands for service in their communities; and the role of the Exchange Centre, in the central headquarters, where a gathering of books of different types sits: our own books (books produced by the Network, based on the rescue of the oral tradition of Cajamarca and other topics of interest for our communities), along with literature, education, agriculture, arts, health, technology, history, among others.

The exchange of books always encourages us because each book is a work tool, it is a means to promote encounters and conversations and they are our friends, our support, our family.

The journey of awareness raising

In mid-May, the Community Program for the accompaniment of children with projected capacities, together with the Resource Center for Basic Special Education (CREBE), Cajamarca, held two awareness and training workshops in the framework of school inclusion in the district of Sócota, province of Cutervo.

The attendance of the teachers of the Initial, Primary and Secondary levels was very high and the public participated actively and with great interest.

The workshop was enriched with Popular Education Participatory Techniques and awareness raising dynamics, thus trying to look differently at inclusive education and education in general.

If we conceive sensitivity as a capacity for people to be moved by beauty and aesthetic values ​​or feelings such as love and tenderness, in both workshops we are able to approach our goal. The teachers who attended the trainings were surprised, happy and encouraged to renew their conception of work with and for children with special educational needs. Together we can conquer a more experiential and appropriate learning space for children in peasant communities.

Fiorela reading

A few days ago I visited the community of Huarrago, in the province of Cutervo, to visit the children that the Community Program for children with projected capacities accompanies in this place.

In Huarrago we attend two girls, Aldana and Fiorela, with infantile cerebral palsy. They can attend the inclusive school in the community thanks to the help of friends in Germany, who take on the expenses for a person who helps the girls to go to the bathroom or the dining room and then to return home.

Both girls, with much effort and the constant and careful dedication of their parents, have learned to walk with walkers, sticks or the support of a person.

Fiorela, at school, learns fast, and this time she told me she wanted to read something for me. The text that she had chosen for this reading moved me a lot: I had written it in 2007 for the presentation of the first edition of Los ojos de Gabi, by Alfredo Mires. The text tells of an experience that I lived as a child with my dad. When Fiorela read it, the irrepressible emotion was not small.

Here I share this text with you:

It was a summer Sunday, one of those days for enjoying the sun. I was six or seven years old and I was with a cousin, my dad and some friends. We went for a walk.

We had already played in the stream, we had eaten the snack that my mother had packed and we had also shared laughs, conversations and anecdotes. We were all happy and tired; It was time to return home.

My cousin and I were the smallest and we still had the strength to keep jumping and playing for a while, so we took my dad, each with one hand, and started running down the slope. It was not a flat place, there were holes, stones and shrubs like anywhere in the countryside. We ran in a hurry, pulling my father running with us ... and we reached the lowest part with a flushed face and a happy heart.

At home, excited, we told my mom how much we had enjoyed the day and especially this moment of running with my dad on that slope. Until now I can remember the amazement and worry on my mother's face: my dad was blind.

Rita Mocker

Responsible for the Community Program

New Rural Library in an educational institute

The educational community of the Cristo Rey school of Masintranca, in Chota, was enthused to request its rural library. This enthusiasm, accompanied and encouraged also by the coordinator of the area, Sergio Díaz Estela, was also extended to undertake the Alternative Reading Plan, which the Rural Libraries Network proposes.

Our brother Alfredo Mires Ortiz met with students and teachers at the school to explain the processes of coloniality that the system imposes on us and how critical, contextual reading and reading of the world can counteract these invasions.

Alfredo, encouraged teachers and students to read their own reality, which is rural, ancestral, respectful of nature. He indicated that the animation of reading can show us the sides of the story that are not written. And how we have to write and re-write them.