Connections

I am inspired by the network of supporters that we have created around the world.  Throughout the past seven years, the story of La Puerta Abierta,  the first community  children's library in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala,  has reached people near and far. 

Three years ago I was blessed to cross paths with Carol Hodges, a librarian from Tidewater Community College who by chance, stumbled across La Puerta Abierta while touring Central America.  She was moved by our efforts to share literacy and creative learning with the youth of our community and was instrumental in creating a sister library relationship between TCC and BPA.  Over the years, Carol has collected and donated meaningful and quality children's books to our library collection.

Last year  Carol connected with Kole Matheson, an instructor at TCC, who was impressed by our commitment to youth and was guided by compassion to help our center as well.  Kole and his wife Andrea organized a supply drive in 2012 collecting and delivering duffle bags packed with educational games, school materials and books for our community.

This year,  Andrea's thirteen year old daughter Julianna who participates in the Teen Leaders Club at the Great Bridge/Hickory YMCA shared the vision of La Puerta Abierta with her local youth group and inspired the teen community to donate to our center whole-heartedly.   Donation boxes quickly filled with glue sticks, glitter, pencils, stickers and paint destined for the children of Santiago Atitlan. 

Thank you Carol, Kole, Andrea, TCC and the Great Bridge/Hickory YMCA for spreading the story of La Puerta Abierta throughout your community and for sharing your kindness with the children of Santiago Atitlan.

As I reflect on the  trail of support that has been created by one serendipitous encounter with Carol three years ago, I am reminded that La Puerta Abierta truly is a community endeavor, a project that supports the community of Santiago Atitlan and a project that is supported by communities who believe in our work.   I am also reminded of the power of one...one person, one story, can make a big difference!

All Smiles

All these smiling faces make me want to smile.  Do they make you want to smile too?

 

 

Miss Ana blows bubbles to her students at the end of our Friday morning Mommy and Me Class!

Meet Nicole and her Bright Dreams

 La Puerta Abierta received a wonderful gift in early 2012 when we learned that Nicole, an energetic and vibrant Education Major at North Carolina State University would be volunteering at our center over the summer.  Nicole had big dreams for her10 week stay in Guatemala.  In addition to volunteering as a teacher at La Puerta Abierta, Nicole had  also designed a program to promote reading within our community.  She was given funding from a university grant which allowed her to purchase a wide array of new books for our center, a computer and printer for La Puerta Abierta, and language soft-ware for both our staff and students.  That was just the beginning....

In addition, Nicole hoped to create a program in which local students could write their own culturally sensitive books which could be published and later used in schools, homes and community centers.  The idea was brilliant...books written and illustrated by local children to be read and enjoyed by local children.  Books are hard to come by in rural Guatemalan communities and most children grow up without having exposure to books.  While 2 months seemed like a short amount of time to accomplish a very ambitious project, I encouraged Nicole to stick to her plans and helped her to create a work plan.  She was teamed up with Juanita, one of our most promising teachers at La Puerta Abierta and carried out her book project with the help and coordination of the staff at Panul Public School, one of the 8 schools that we partner with via our Traveling Library Program. 

While Nicole did experience a few challenges along the way (time moves slowly here and dead-lines are hard to meet, Spanish is a second language for the Tzutuhil speaking community of Santiago, reading and writing skills are poor, and students have little exposure to creative activities), she met with students twice weekly to move forward with the book project and to help and encourage children with their stories.

Six weeks later, an enthusiastic group of students from Panul received their very own books, in many cases their first book, written and illustrated by themselves!  Story topics included a variety of cultural themes such as local deities, market fruits, and traditional folk-lore.

To celebrate and honor the young writers and their stories, Nicole organized two book readings in our community.  The first was held at The Sharing the Dream Elders' Center where Santiago seniors delighted in seeing the young, sweet faces of  students reading stories about their community.  The second fiesta was held at Panul School where the children shared their stories with class-mates, teachers and families.

Nicole is now back in America  where she will complete her last year of studies before becoming a teacher.  She plans to integrate her experiences abroad in her teaching curriculum and La Puerta Abierta hopes to create an on-going relationship with her future classes.

La Puerta Abierta extends a heart felt thank you to Nicole for her generosity, compassion, and innovative ideas.

Puzzles for Panabaj

Candelaria has been working in the community of Panabaj for over 3 years now.  She is our Traveling Library Coordinator and every Monday afternoon, she journeys to the tiny Panabaj Community Center nestled between coffee bushes, dirt roads and small square houses to bring 2 hours of fun to the children of Panabaj.  Each visit includes a story, a creative art project and a critical thinking activity.

Last Monday, Candelaria packed up a box of puzzles to share with the children at the Panabaj Learning Center.  I was intrigued to see how such a simple game could bring hours of entertainment to the students.  In addition of "playing" with the puzzles, I observed how the children quickly discovered strategies for linking their puzzle pieces.  This may seem like a simple task for children growing up in developed countries who are surrounded by educational toys and games.  However, for the students of Panabaj toys such as puzzles, memory, and building blocks are hard to come by.  At La Puerta Abierta, we strive to provide opportunities for students to develop their critical thinking skills through play.

Muchas Gracias Karen y Amigas

Over 5 years ago, Karen Hedrick, a retired teacher from San Diego and I chatted excitedly over a cup of coffee about our shared dream of creating a children's library for the community of Santiago Atitlan.  We both loved books and children and were inspired to share the gift of reading with the children of Santiago Atitlan.  Little did I know that our casual conversation would transform into La Puerta Abierta Children's Library.  Karen and I co-founded La Puerta Abierta in January of 2007.  Throughout the past five years, we've developed a center which hosts story hours, lends books, inspires creativity and critical thinking, brings book kits to rural communities, and serves our community as a safe and nurturing environment for Santiago youth. 

This past May, Karen organized a service oriented trip for 5 of her friends (Patti, Anne, Annie, Terri, Sharon and Lauri) from Spokane Washington.  The group spent one week volunteering in our center and surrounding schools.  During their stay in Santiago, the group taught violin classes, donated eye-glasses to the elders, shared felt story boards with our students, participated in a letter exchange between Guatemalan and US students, and worked in Tzanchaj school to teach music and voice lessons to the older students. 

In addition, Karen and friends organized a supply and book drive within their community and donated new books and materials to our center.

Muchas Gracias!

Saturday Mornings...

Saturday mornings at La Puerta Abierta are colorful, lively and fun.  Children as young as 1 and as old as five gather in our center for an hour of stories, music and creative play.  We've been collaborating with Sara, a talented Early Childhood Development Specialist comitted to living in Santiago for the duration of the year, who is helping us develop activities for our young students that are stimulating, engaging and age-appropriate.  While the children in our classes are our primary focus, we also aim to model simple learning activities that parents can observe during the class and later replicate within the home. 

A Special Delivery from Tidewater Community College

Our teachers are all smiles as they unpack the supplies delivered from Tidewater Community College.

Juanita, our talented story-teller shares one of the donated books from TCC with a group of attentive students.

In August of 2010, La Biblioteca Puerta Abierta received a wonderful gift.  As if fate had lead her to our front door, Carol Hodges, a librarian from Tidewater Community College stumbled upon our small children's library.  In a bustling village of moto-taxis, crowded stone buildings, zig-zagging streets with no signs, this truly was a small miracle.  When Carol entered our library, a local librarian was reading the last pages of a book to a young audience for a community story hour. During this brief encounter, Carol  was inspired by our mission to share the gift of reading and books with the students of Santiago Atitlan.

Upon arrival to Virginia, Carol was moved to create ways to support our programs and to connect the students and staff of Tidewater Community college with La Puerta Abierta.

TCC has organized two supply drives for our center.  Earlier this year, she teamed with  Kole Matheson, a TCC Adjunct English and ESL Professor and Library Specialist to lead an on campus book and material drive for La Puerta Abierta.  Our staff was overjoyed to receive a personally delivered suitcase stuffed with supplies and books for our library.  Carol  hand-picked many of the books herself at a Guadalajara book fair that she had attended in late 2011. 

La Puerta Abierta  remains immensely grateful for the serendipitous visit over two years ago which linked us with Carol and her library.  We are honored to have been taken under the wings of The Tidewater Community College Library as their sister library and have been touched by Carol's kindness and generosity.

Muchas Gracias Tidewater Community College!

Vacation

The Guatemalan school year begins in January and ends in October. Many years ago, children provided for a large portion of the coffee harvesting work force, hence school break was linked to the ripening coffee bean. While some children continue to work the fields during vacation months, most kids stay close to home, spending time with family and playing with neighborhood friends.

For the past 5 years, La Puerta Abierta has taken advantage of the vacation months to reach out to children in Santiago and provide them with educational, fun and stimulating activities. In addition to offering an introduction class to kindergarten for our young students "Mis Primeros Pasitos," we have also brought our programs to 3 rural communities in Atitlan on a weekly basis via our Biblioteca Movil. Local children from surrounding communities gathered to hear fantastic stories, create colorful art and make new friends.

Last week, we were able to bring our 3 participating communities together for an end of the year holiday party. We had good reason to celebrate....another wonderful year of sharing education, creativity, literature, and love with the children of our community!

Celebrating Young Artists

La Puerta Abierta was delighted to collaborate with Fotokids and Angelika Bauer in hosting a Children's Art and Photo Exhibit last weekend. We were so happy to celebrate the young and talented artists from our community.

La Puerta Abierta has partnered with German artist Angelika Bauer for two years now in bringing creative art practices to the youth of Santiago Atitlan.

A Giving Family Vacation

La Puerta Abierta received a wonderful visit from Danielle and her family last month. She hoped to create a meaningful and alternative family vacation for her children and mother. I invite you to read about her experience spending a week with our center in Santiago Atitlan and encourage other families to consider a similar volunteer oriented vacation.

My twin 8-year olds, Zoe and Aiden, and I visited Santiago shortly after school got out with our offer to Amanda to use us in whatever way she saw fit -- we were open for anything. What that turned into was a whole host of small jobs spanning a week. My kids were mostly engaged in the preschool half of La Puerta Abierta during the mornings, assisting the 18 preschoolers with morning activities, preparing paints, singing and dancing with the group, helping clean up, and generally supporting the teachers in whatever way was helpful. They shifted between being participants (in songs, games, and even a parade) and being helpers for the little kids, and got to use the Spanish they have learned during their 4 years in our public Spanish immersion school. During class time, I was often in the library next door helping Chonita prepare materials for the week (LPA makes all their own educational materials, such as a poster on "los 5 sentidos" (the five senses) or "ninos del mundo" (children of the world)), or gluing in new activity sheets into the preschoolers' workbooks, or drying dishes from snack time. The separation was good, in that it helped my kids to act more independently and better focus on the needs of the kids and ways they could help.

We also had lots of chances to get out into other schools. LPA supports 8 other schools with supplemental materials and drop-in teachers. A typical "bolsa" contains several Spanish reading books for the teachers, plus some related enhancement activity for the local teacher to use in his/her class -- those bags rotate on a regular basis. Many of the materials we collected and donated as a school (Spanish books, school supplies, etc.,) find their way into these bags, and into the community beyond the four walls of LPA. We visited four of the 8 schools -- two in Santiago, and two outside in more rural areas -- for a few hours each with teachers Candelaria and Mildred. In both cases, we were invited to assist handing out materials or lead small group activities. My kids were often happiest when there was time to just play and kick the soccer ball around with the other kids.

Particularly in these rural schools, we all got a sense of the very basic conditions under which most Guatemalan students are learning. Classrooms are modest, materials are few, but the desire and the energy levels of the kids to learn is strong. In every case, Candelaria and Mildred were greeted with joy and lots of hugs by the kids. They represent a chance to have some fun with learning, by reading "Los Huevos de Dora" for example, and then painting their own eggs, which Candelaria posted onto "baskets" taped to the wall. Mildred brought puppets to bring life to the story of "Que dices tu?", engaging the students in figuring out which animal is making the "muuu" sound. Songs and active play are a big part of the LPA approach, and it is clear that it is a big part of what helps to excite the students about learning.

One of the classes we visited was one which had, some months earlier, prepared a "caja de tesores" for our elementary school. The treasures they sent up not only taught our students about life in Guatemala, but helped to facilitate an exchange of goods, so that when we came down in July with our donated treasures (assorted pencils and Silly bands and such from our school's 3rd grade Girl Scout troop), we were able to reciprocate their generosity. It was a true blessing to be able to deliver those treasures -- along with several materials that our students had prepared to describe life at our school and life in America -- to the kids in person.
We lived with a homestay family, which was wonderful. My kids adapted quickly to the food, the local transport, the modest conditions and lukewarm showers, and the work. This is the second such volunteer experience we have done overseas in a Spanish speaking country, and in each case, I have seen the kids grow and mature, and show sides of them that are not often evident to me in the craziness of our daily lives.

With any luck, we'll be able to return to LPA in the future and/or find other organizations in the future that are as willing to accept us as volunteers as Amanda and her staff have been. Amanda was conscious of ensuring that we had a good volunteer experience (that comes from our shared experience as Peace Corps Volunteers, I think...), and yet didn't go out of her way to entertain us -- which I respect, particularly given the many many hats she wears. That gave us a sense of autonomy and freedom that we used to explore Santiago. I would encourage anyone with the means and opportunity to do so to find their way to Santiago to spend some time with Amanda, Chonita, Candelaria, Mildred and all the other wonderful teachers at La Puerta Abierta. You'll come away inspired and changed, and with the knowledge that you have indeed have an "open door" waiting for your return.

Parade!

This year, La Puerta Abierta participated in Santiago's community parade celebrating La Feria and our local saint, Santiago. The theme for the parade was stories and legends from around the world and we chose to represent one of our class-room favorite read alouds, Bill Martin's Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Our students were simply adorable!

Busy!

Just take a look at the variety of students who visited La Puerta Abierta Library last week.

Danielle helps a group of Jr. High girls learn a song in English.

Two young volunteers from Washington DC play games with local children.

Juan reads a new children's book.

IHF scholarship students work on their homework.

Chloe stops by to play.

Saturday morning creativity workshop.

Mildred helps two Sparks Foundation scholarship students with their math homework.

Montse teaches a music class.

A visiting volunteer helps Eric with his English homework.

And, Angelika teaches an art class for PHOTOKIDS.

Sometimes you just have to ask...

In early January we received a visit from Margee, a retired preschool teacher from Wisconson who was touring Guatemala with Farmer to Farmer, a grass-roots organization working in Guatemala to support peace and cross-cultural understanding. As we were just launching our new preschool program at La Puerta Abierta, we were delighted to have a vertran teacher on site.

Margee too, was inspired by her visit to La Puerta Abierta and amongst returning to the US, she started a book and supply drive within her community for our center. She began collecting art supplies and school materials from local libraries, elementary schools, and girl scout troops. She also sent a letter to Scholastic soliciting books in Spanish for our center and....4 months later, two big boxes of donated books showed up on her door step.

I continue to give thanks for our network of friends and supporters around the world who believe in our work at La Puerta Abierta and who not only sustain our programs, but allow them to grow and expand. Two of our biggest fans and supporters, Judy and her son Chris, made their second journey this year to Guatemala. In addition to bringing a suitcase full of donations collected amongst their church friends for the library, they also hauled our new Scholastic books to La Puerta Abierta.

Truly, I have received so much joy in my work...I'm living my dream and find my days filled with purpose and gratitude. I feel blessed that others can also participate in joyful giving from afar, sharing our story of La Puerta Abierta and caring for the children of Santiago Atitlan.

We send a heart felt thank you to Margee, Judy, Chris and SCHOLASTIC BOOKS!

Sharing

At The BPA we engage in good, soulful, service work nearly every day at our center in Santiago Atitlan. Recently, we felt inspired to "share the service wealth" with another grass-roots library in Santa Catarina Palopo. We visited Biblioteca Ru K'ux Na'oj, "el corazon de conocimiento," to help them design and paint a mural for their library. Our resident artist (and volunteer) Bonnie, aided in the creation of a captivating visual which represented our journeys with reading. Our team of librarians accompanied her to help with the project. Local students from Santa Catarina also collaborated with painting the mural.