Thursday, March 4, 2010

Costa Rica Book Project Moves Forward

Reader to Reader's Cait Scudder met recently with community members of Santa Cruz, Costa Rica for their first planning session for the literacy project Beyond el Campo.

Beyond el Campo will help the rural village build a community library and also stock the town's small elementary school library.

Located in the mountains, the villagers of Santa Cruz struggle everyday to put food on the table, earning 10 dollars average daily income for the exhausting work of handpicking coffee beans. Their hope that their children can have higher paying jobs rests on improving their reading skills.

"I am so impressed by the passion and creativity being generated by the community towards the library project," Cait Scudder says. "Already, there are parents, community members, and teachers voicing their thoughts, and planning the next steps of the project. They are so excited at the mere thought of having access to a single book, let alone a library full-- most of the people attending these meetings have never been able to purchase a book before."

About Beyond el Campo:

With Beyond el Campo, Reader To Reader works together with severely under-resourced schools in rural Costa Rica in an effort to strengthen their educational resources, and teams with local community members to build community library resources in towns that have no other access to books.

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