Earthquake Relief for Children in Shelters

One year of adventures in companionship with the traveling stick and Travelina, the pink suitcase.

After the year anniversary of the Earthquake in Ecuador last April, Clara Luna is one of the few organizations that continues activities with the children affected in the northern part of Manabi.

Once a month, the Clara Luna team of 4-5 volunteers takes a long weekend to work in their project “Cuentos en la plaza bibliotecas Moviles.” (Books in the plaza, mobile libraries). The adventure begins very early on Saturday morning where we take a 4-5 hour journey, change buses 4 times, and we do all that will traveling with a stick 2.5 meters long and a pink suitcase that play a role in our programming.

In June, the children listened to stories of monsters. They learned about emotions through the book “Monster of colores” and “Nac, Nac, the moster that eats books” and like always we put on a play, which this month was “Grufalo”. We visited the communities of Chone, Bahia de Caraquez, Rio Muchacho, and Canoa.

In July, we focused on Diversity. “Elmer, the elephant of colors” and “Luciano el gusano” were two stories that taught how to respect differences. The play for that month was “Los musicos de Bremen” that was enhanced by musical sounds the kids put together. In this month we visited Chone, San Vicente, Bahia de Caraquez, and Tabuchila.

In August, with a little bit of humor, we worked on tolerance and empathy through the books “Fernando del furiosos”, “pastel para enemigos” and “hipopotamo Peleon”. Our play for this month was “the worst lady in the whole world”. This month we visited Chone, San Vicente, Bahia de Caraquez, and Tabuchila.

That concludes our adventures for the past three months, stay tuned for more! 

Clara Luna foundation, in February, held a workshop to engage community leaders in their own library projects. With your donations, we were able to train these community leaders in running a mobile library and childrens center in their communities and donate 100 childrens books for their own mobile library. In attendance were community leaders from six different communities that were affected and still are affected by last years earthquake. 

Since this training, Clara Luna has made two trips to each of the six different communities to monitor and evaluate the success of our training and the mobile libraries. With great pleasure we can share that five out of our six mobile libraries are well on their way and have more than 50 children in attendance at their weekly activities. The sixth mobile library is still working on getting off the ground and this week, Clara Luna volunteers will spend extra time focusing on this community to help them succeed. 

Clara Luna plans to continue to support these mobile libraries for the next year, aiding in fundraising, ideas for childrens activities, gaining support and participants. We look forward to what the next year holds for these libraries and all they great things they will do. And more importantly, the smiles they are bringing to children in the earthquake affected areas!