In mid-May, we received several copies of the book Guernica Ica, by writer Isaac Cazorla, as a donation from our colleague and friend Gabriela Hidalgo, who volunteered with Network a few years ago. We are thrilled and delighted to know that we are still a family willing to support each other and continue on the same path.
Thank you, Gaby, for your valuable contribution. It will be of great help in continuing to encourage our readers in the different libraries in the countryside.
Here in the Andes, rural people tend to be grateful for the weather: we welcome the rain, we thank the hail for fertilising the fields, and we enjoy the warm sunshine that shelters us.
However, with climate change in recent years, we also know that torrential rains can damage the soil and that strong sunshine can burn us.
Today we received some photos from our Rural Library in Educational Institution (BRIE) in Quinuacruz, Cajabamba. The educational community at this institution knows how wonderful it is to leave the classroom and read in nature. That is why the teaching staff came up with the initiative to build a reading hut where students can read under a thatched roof, with natural light and in a cosy environment.
We send our greetings and sincere congratulations for this wonderful initiative!
Seed of love turned into a path.
Blood of my blood.
Dreams of my dreams.
Light with eyes, eyes of light.
Life force alive, clamour, tenderness.
Grace of ingenuous gods.
Stone, promise, star.
Anarchic and sincere sky.
Sleepless dance of arrows.
Light green, tender moss.
Dance, God, for dawn is breaking.
Fly, wheat, be fruitful.
Never forget who you are,
fill your voice with discovery.
Do not delay in germinating.
Always return in bloom.
Alfredo Mires
in: Romance of the Mountain
This year, the Community Programme for the support of children with projectable abilities celebrated 31 years of presence in the rural communities of Cajamarca. Countless children and their families have been supported by our coordinators, and most of them have improved their living conditions thanks to the love, teachings and comprehensive therapies we have been able to provide.
Over the years, the Community Programme team has been trained and strengthened, we have learned and adapted our methodologies and strategies, and we have grown as people. But we have also grown a little older.
At the beginning of this year, we received the difficult news that the financial support currently provided by Kindernothilfe e.V. in Germany to sustain our programme will soon come to an end.
As a team, we are taking this news with dignity, calm and confidence; we know the mark we have left and the good we have been able to do for many children and their families.
At our meeting in May, we looked for ways and strategies to round off and complement our work over all these years and to bring it to a successful conclusion in the future. As the head of the Community Programme, I am very proud of our extraordinary team and of the wisdom, maturity, courage and optimism of our rural coordinators in continuing on this path, in different ways, for the good of children with disabilities.
I thank you and embrace you from my heart.
Rita Mocker
Head of the Community Programme
At a school in Cajamarca, children often enjoy reading our storybook instalments. They are their favourites because they tell different and entertaining stories.
Some identify them by the colours of the covers: they look for the purple book, the green one, the light blue one... Others know the titles very well: ‘I want the Pishgo Indian', or 'the seven pieces of advice,’ they say. Some remember the numbers better: I still have to read number 7, I've already read number 15. Others, from time to time, search for the title of a story: the book where the fool carries the door, the fox uncle and the rabbit. But children's innocence is greater than all academic or pedagogical formalities, their sincerity is exquisite, and one day, one who had forgotten all the other clues managed to say: ‘I want that book where there are cheeky words’.
In the past, perhaps, his teacher would have been scandalised, or perhaps she would not even have had those books in her library; but that is why we unlearn and learn again, valuing the expressions of our communities. So it was not difficult to find the story, although it was not easy either, because in these books there are several that have ‘naughtiness’, the kind that makes children's faces redden, but which they also love.
In June 2023, during a trip to Medellin, Colombia, I met Leidy Velez. Those of us who love her call her Lez.
Lez is a librarian, reading mediator, archivist...and friend. I think the latter characterizes her best. I met Lez at a bebeteca, a library for babies, a space where she moves like a fish in water. Reading to children -young and old- is her passion.
This April, Lez came to Peru and did not hesitate for a moment to visit us in Cajamarca to visit Bibliotecas Rurales and offer her support in several reading mediation activities in different spaces of the Network.
She gave a workshop on reading, writing and orality for teachers at the central base of the Libraries Network and another for teachers at the UGEL of Cajabamba. The teachers were amazed.
We also visited the Malcas Garden, in the Condebamba valley, where the Network has a Rural Library in an Educational Institution. There we carried out four small units of reading promotion in the beautiful library of this garden and we returned with a renewed spirit because of the affection given to us by the children, their parents and teachers.
The few days I was able to share with Lez were full of deep conversations, learning and amazement. But it was also a time of much companionship, kindness and laughter.
Thank you, Lez, for your presence among us.
Come back soon.
Rita Mocker
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