Support literacy and learning for 1,900 Maya youth

Dear supporters,

Last week marked the end of “Reading Adventures,” a special 2 months of vacation activities in the Limitless Horizons Ixil Saber Sin Límites Community Library in Chajul. (In Guatemala, the long vacation between school years starts in October). Every day, kids flocked to the library to read together and read alone. The kids who came regularly were rewarded last week with a special gift—a book all of their own, the first many of these little ones have ever owned!

One of the most memorable and exciting activities during Reading Adventures was our “field day.” Sixty-six young kids from the library joined hands (each with a partner) and moved en mass down the dirt road to a local school’s big empty field, with our librarian Marilú, program & library manager Edilma, volunteer Meg, a group of older Youth Development Program participants, and myself helping to supervise and organize. All we needed was each other, the great outdoors, and a few activities. Between smatterings of rain underneath a cloudy sky, we had ourselves some fun.

Marilú and Meg had planned a treasure hunt for the day—an educational treasure hunt. We were divided into 5 groups with a staff member or volunteer, an older LHI youth, and 14 kids in each group. My team was “the insects.” We hunted for a box of questions in the field, and opened it to discover questions about insects! All of our little teammates put our heads together to write down names of different insects, parts of their bodies, and places where the insects could be found. When we rejoined the larger group, each team took a turn presenting our discoveries—and each of our kids performed a demonstration of a type of insect they had found in the field. Our 2 tiniest members—sisters, smaller than all the other children, who had stuck close together all day—embodied little ants and wandered around the large circle of kids “attacking” the other little ant children! Screams and giggles made their way around the crowd.

It is your support of our library that allows us to make educational activities like field day happen. Your donations also allow us to provide training resources and mentorship to our librarians and local staff so that they can develop their own expertise and creativity to nurture our children. Your gift allows us to continue giving these kids a space for expression, opportunities to grow and develop, and the chance to create fun memories.

Happy holidays and thank you, from the children and library members in Chajul.

Warm regards,

Danielle 

Links:

• Limitless Horizons Ixil website

Thanks to you, our generous donors, Limitless Horizons Ixil has received fantastic support in 2012-2013 for the early childhood literacy programming in the Saber Sin Límites Community Library. So we're writing to update you on how things continue to grow and how the library is doing overall! The funding we’ve received through our campaign has allowed our local library team to further develop our services from literacy materials, a space conducive to study, academic support, and literacy programming in the library. 

The library has had a great growth spurt in recent months! Our local staff led a number of publicity initiatives in Chajul schools to spread the word about the library services offered and the response has been overwhelmingly positive—173 new users registered in June alone! (In our last update, we reported 70 new users in March—so this increase in sign-ups is huge!) Thanks to recent donations from partner organizations and individual donors, the collection of books also continues to grow. The number of registered users is now almost 1,400 and the number of books in the library is greater than 5,000.

Riding this wave of growth, we are focused on deepening the impact of our early childhood literacy program to have the fullest benefit to our youngest library users. Most of our regular users are under the age of 8, the age at which most students in Chajul start school. So, their time in the library is a highly influential introduction to literacy and education as well as an opportunity to bridge educational gaps left by the under-funded and under-resourced local school system.

Story Hour and Reading Club activities provide young readers and pre-literate children structured exposure to the Spanish language and focused comprehension practice. Combining this with creative interaction opportunities such as accompanying art projects allow youth an engaging activity outside of school hours where they can continue to learn, fostering a love of learning. 

Our greatest success in the Saber Sin Límites library is certainly its fast-growing popularity among youth in Chajul—there are 50-200 people in the library at the same time during popular activities! This is also the root of our greatest current challenge because of demands on our limited resources.

Looking forward, we are working hard to make the remainder of 2013 a defining period for our library, with improved structure for all library visitors, better time management for our librarians to continue to provide a high level of individual support, and a deeper engagement with early childhood literacy and education methodologies to take full advantage of youth engagement and further develop the positive impact of our programs on education.

Thank you for your continued support and interest in the progress of Chajul’s only community library!