Libraries and Consuelo

After attending a conference given by our colleague Alfredo Mires in Medellín a couple of years ago, Consuelo Marín, a Colombian librarian, asked if she could visit us to see our experience directly, as she had attained a grant to visit Peru.

So, Consuelo has visited us, has come out to the countryside to see some of our libraries, and we organised a workshop on encouraging reading in schools, in which teachers, students and other interested parties participated.

In this workshop we reaffirmed that if adults love to hear fantastic (or seemingly fantastic) stories, then children and teenagers, who retain an enormous capacity to wonder, even more so.  The experiences demonstrated show us that motivating children and teenagers to read and write is not an impossible task: it is an urgent decision, a responsibility which teachers, parents and society in general must assume if, for once and for all, we wish to contribute to positive change within this alienating and graceless education system, in its daily practices inside and outside the classroom.