Evaluating with love

The end of the year is approaching and in the Community Programme it is our turn to monitor and evaluate our work.

It is not our favourite thing to do, but at the beginning of the coordinators' meeting one morning in November I see cheerful and happy faces. I am also encouraged. I think that we evaluate in order to improve, to be able to better accompany children with projectable capacities. They are our articulating axis. Our proposal revolves around them.

Sometimes it is difficult to make our friends in the organisations that support us understand that. It is even more difficult for auditors to understand us, because in this world of ‘impact indicators’ and ‘logical framework’, the sense of community has been lost. But we remain just that: a big family that treats each other with respect and affection, that puts affection before economics and embrace before perfection.

Because before being librarians (or coordinators) we are human. And we are collective, we are the other, we are the others, as Alfredo taught us. We are proud of that. 

Rita Mocker

What are they doing?

We are holding our second General Assembly this year.

Who's under the hat?

It's teacher José Isabel, making his cartonera, a strategy for sharing readings, using disposable material. Consuelo and Nathalie taught it to us, as part of the training at our Assembly.

What are Don Javier, Rosita, Don Aníbal, Don Eusebio and all the others doing?

They are demonstrating the results of their teamwork: the alphabet of words related to the Rural Libraries Network, to books and reading. This allowed us to see how much we have to show to others, we learned about linguistic borrowings and other resources presented to us by Fernando Hoyos, a Colombian friend, a reading mediator, who also gave us other strategies to share in our communities.

Thank you, Fernando, for your solidarity with us!

It's been a while, Doña Laurita!

Yes, Doña Laura lives far away, she is the coordinator of the Algamarca sector. And she didn't want to miss a minute of this Assembly. She and Don Jacinto arrived early to participate.

What are they watching?

Ah, it's a virtual conference we received from another friend of the Network, Irene Vasco, who is also a reading mediator. She shared with us her experience in the library ‘La Alegría', in Santiago de Tolú, in Colombia.

Reading is like travelling

Six hours from the city of Cajamarca is Masintranca, in the province of Chota. Six hours of travel where you pass through the pit, that open wound called Yanacocha. Where the temperatures drop the higher up the jalca you go. 

They welcome us at home, Don Sergio and Doña Dona with open arms and warm smiles; they receive these strangers who arrive hungry, humble and eager to share what they know. 

In a ravine a shy path leads us to the Rural Library ‘Spring of the Andes’. With a smile as bright as the rising sun, we are welcomed by Jesús Ruiz, the rural librarian, who invites us in. Our joy could not be greater when we contemplate the library with the titles of the books so colourful and beautiful, looking at us, placed in a frontal way, making them more attractive to pick up and read.

Together with Fernando, a Colombian friend from Medellín, we set out like children to explore the attractive library. We picked up the books from the ‘Los Nuestros’ collection of the Enciclopedia Campesina and Fer worked his magic. He spread out a fuchsia blanket with Andean details and placed some books on it like a small mandala. Suddenly from one of his fingers came out a little orange bird puppet and he smilingly asked us which songbirds we knew. So, little by little, Don Sergio, Jesús, Rita and I began to remember. We began to write and tell how those wise phrases of popular tradition came to us. 

In Cutaxi, around a small and cosy Plaza de Armas, in a house next to a caramel-coloured horse, there is another Rural Library. Here, the mandala and the blanket were spread out on a table and riddles, the hangman's game and local jokes were the spice of the session, in which we wrote, we recounted, and we flushed with laughter. 

Finally, I would like to share Don Sergio and Jesús' pechada, which goes like this:

Farewell, farewell

I wouldn't want to say farewell 

When it comes time to say goodbye 

I would die in your arms.

Consuelo Solis R.

Cajamarca, 2024

With you

‘With you'

Will be synonymous with

‘With me’.

Alfredo Mires

In: La ensoñación del Ñaupa (The dreaming of Ñaupa)

Reading Encounter in Contumazá

Every year in November, our coordinator Ramiro Yglesias from Hoyada Verde, in Contumazá, holds a Reading Encounter in a community where he has libraries. Ramiro tells us about his last meeting:

‘The Coordination of Rural Libraries, Contumazá zone shares the work done in the Reading Encounter last November 12th of this year, which was very rich for having had the participation of librarians, teachers and children readers from different educational institutions, reaffirming the commitment to continue this task, to continue rescuing the uses and customs of our elders.

Sincerely

Ramiro Yglesias Díaz

Contumazá Sector Coordinator’.

Congratulations, brother Ramiro. And thank you very much for taking the initiative to continue organising these events. Let's move forward!

Consuelo with us

Since mid-November, Consuelo Solis Rivera, journalist and reading mediator, has been volunteering with the Rural Libraries Network. 

Consuelo is helping us to organise our reference library, but she has also supported us with a lot of dedication to the training in reading mediation during the last Assembly of the Network, in November. She goes out with us to the rural areas to visit rural libraries and to support the training of our librarians and coordinators. She takes on various daily tasks and simply enriches our team with her talents, her knowledge and her encouragement.

Thank you, Consuelo, for being with us and for sharing.

New roof

The house of the Rural Library Network was built in minga many years ago. And, like any house, we know that it will never be completely finished; we know that there will always be something new to do or something to repair.

Our dining room, for example, is a large space, full of light, with a view of the trees and all the dear plants we planted in the garden beside It's a special place, because that's where we sit down with our fellow librarians, coordinators and all the other volunteers of the Network to share our meals during our meetings. We also share the occasional delicious coffee, remembering those who are no longer here, welcoming those who are joining us, celebrating the life of some of us, making plans, thinking about new dreams... in short.

And, like every space in our house, this time, we were warned that the rainy season would cause it to suffer some inconveniences; it had several leaks, deteriorated wood and one or another tile moved by the kittens that always visit us.

So, with the help of our companions Sergio, Dilber, Sheguito and Javier, well accompanied by Karina, who always gave them the recommendations we hold in mind from Alfredo, we managed to change and improve the whole roof.

As a preventive measure for the dry season, we fixed the tanks where we collect the water from the rains, which we then use for cleaning the toilets or watering the gardens, as well as the tank that collects a little water, so that we don't run out in the kitchen.

Now, we are just waiting for the rains -although they are a long time coming-, or maybe they are waiting for our little roof to be ready to be used for the first time, hopefully.

These repairs have been made possible thanks to the support of our friends from the Italian association Help for Friends, Sarah's Rural Libraries Fund, who are always looking after the maintenance of the Network's premises, and the Belgian organisation Esperanza TM, who recently contributed to the repair of the roof of our book depository.