By Daniela Longato | Institutional Development Intern
Dear supporter,
This is our last report of a very busy year!
As you may know, each year Vaga Lume’s Technical Team goes on monitoring trips to rural communities in the Amazon. But in 2015, getting close to our 15th year birthday, we decided to do even more, we visited all the community libraries in just one year to monitor and evaluate the work that has been done since 2001. It was 171 days in the field where we were able to train new volunteers as reading mediators, strength the relationship with the communities and a lot more.
During those 53.000 miles travelled, we received many visitors such as volunteers, representatives of our partners, groups of researchers, etc.. Among them, was Eliana Gagliardi. Graduated in Philosophy and in Applied Linguistic, she met the organization when the school she managed - Oswald de Andrade School – became part of Vaga Lume’s Intercultural Dialogue Program and now that she has retired, she came to us to be a volunteer.
She accompanied the monitoring expedition to the municipality of Ponte Alta do Tocantins, in Tocantins state. During the trip, she observed the reading mediation training session that Vaga Lume has promoted to youth in the community and after that, she wrote us a letter that we would like to share with you:
"Within my impressions of this expedition, I could see that Vaga Lume’s educators have experience and get along very well with community residents. I also realized that community residents were totally opened and interested in learning about reading mediation, about books and how important is to have access to them. They learnt to maintain the space and to offer it to the community so they can use it for storytelling, dance, and other cultural activities.
As a volunteer, I flied to learn. I've learnt with the educators of Vaga Lume, I've learnt with educators from the Amazon. I've learnt, among other things, to consider and interact with different cultures. This kind of learning demands attention, effort and open mind of all of the involved. Demands availability, mobilization and conviction that books and reading mediation can make difference: they are the first steps – along with literacy – to form readers and above all: citizens".
We are very happy to have Eliana as a volunteer and her letter gave us one more reason to continue working to create opportunities for cultural exchange through reading and valuing the protagonism of people from the Amazon. We hope you feel the same way!
We would like to thank you for being part of it and invite you to keep on navigating with us through the rural communities of the Amazon!
Other stories and news are available at www.vagalume.org.br/home
If you have any doubts or comments, do drop us a line!
Kind regards,
Vaga Lume's Team.
Links:
By Daniela Longato | Institutional Development Intern
By Laura Mattar and Thais Galano | Institutional Development Team
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser