When I first moved to Granada over 7 years ago, I (and friends) noticed the very conspicuous lack of books, bookstores and libraries. Nobody seemed to read. Children had never seen a picture book. The schools had no text books. We realized that culturally, reading was hardly a priority, and financially, in this very poor country, books were a rare luxury. Very little in-country publishing exists, and the imported books available, mostly in Managua, were expensive even by our standards.
A friend and I started collecting books to distribute among the children we knew. As teachers, we were, and are very aware of the importance of reading for pleasure an integral part of education. The early childhood development in our countries has a strong basis in listening to stories and being familiarized with picture books. In fact, global research has shown time and again that the best students in the world, regardless of economies or cultures, all share a common trait: they read for pleasure, and were read to as children. The hours a student spends reading for pleasure, in or out of class, and being read to as a child, strongly correlates with later academic and economic success. We realized that if Nicaragua was going to ever get out of its educational and economic rut, reading had to become a priority. Reading for pleasure, that is. And where does almost anyone in the developed world go for free books? The lending library of course – practically non-existent in this country.
As we began to collect more and more books and lend them out to neighbors from our individual houses, we became aware of an extremely successful lending library in nearby San Juan Del Sur, a small fishing village on the Pacific Coast. This library had been started by a friend, Jane Mirandette, and was one of the first lending libraries in all of Nicaragua. We visited several times and were inspired to start our own small operation.
We began by hooking up with the local Ministry of Education and gave several workshops on the importance and the basics of reading to children for pleasure. The teachers found it wonderful, but how could they apply this new knowledge without books? So we began our library project by lending 5 books a week to the first grade classes. They swapped the books among themselves in their respective schools so that the classes could hear a new book every day.
We asked all our friends, and all tourists coming down to bring or send Spanish books. We wondered how we could ever collect enough books for a city of over 120,000 people. But the books kept rolling in. Eventually someone offered their very large front sala (living room) as a free space and we opened our first actual lending library 4 years ago. Nobody in Granada had ever seen a lending library, so this was culturally very strange. All our local friends, including teachers, Ministry of Education educators, and library association personnel told us we would lose all our books to thievery if we dared to loan them to children. The opposite happened and our return rate has continuously rivaled North America’s.
Since then we have grown to 3 physical locations, and have installed mini-libraries in many of the local public schools and outlying rural communities. We routinely train teachers and community leaders. Our school lending program has expanded to over 25 schools. We have probably collected close to 10,000 books over this time, though many of these have been given away to local schools and libraries. We have connected to other similar NGOs (non-government organizations) in the area, such as Building New Hope (www.buildingnewhope.org) and Libros Para Ninos for mutual support.
All of this development really happened quite organically. We thought we would have trouble getting books down, but as soon as we put the word out, they literally came flooding in. We have always managed to find someone to donate space for the central lending library itself as well as the two reading centers we run in the city. We manage to employ a full time librarian and several assistants. Despite the fact that nobody on our board has experience with fund-raising, we always manage to get enough grants and donations to keep on going.
The only advice I would offer is to really keep the goal in mind, maintain a strong commitment, keep organizing as you grow, and communicate with everyone you know. I strongly believe that it was our passion alone that spurred this project along. Now our main problem is keeping up with our expansion.
Visit us at www.buildingnewhope.org/puedo-leer.html. And feel free to write us if you want to start a similar project.
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June,2010
