Give-a-Book Project
My involvement with Give-a-Book in Costa Rica came about in the fall of 2015 when the Goshen Rotary Club was considering an international project. The Goshen Club had become aware of this joint US Peace Corps-Rotary collaboration through the Goshen Rotary Club President, Diane Woodworth, whose son and daughter-in-law were serving as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. The remarked that schools there had few if any reading books!
Goshen Rotary connected with Carl Dickerson, hosted him in Goshen to learn of the program, and Cathie Cripe and I represented the Goshen club in participating with a mission in November 2015 to visit Luke and Brittany Woodworth in the Osa. That positive experience led to Goshen Rotary doing a successful joint library distribution and eye clinic the following spring during which more than 20 schools received libraries and distributed more than 400 pairs of glasses, mostly custom made to each person's presecription.
Sharon and I led a small team later in 2016 including friends Myrl Nofziger and Steve Johnson and visited Guanacaste including Nosara where the Elkhart Rotary Club has long had a connection with Beverly Kitson and the David Kitson Memorial Library. I traveled with a team in June 2017 to the La Fortuna area in the north of the country.
Give-a-Book is a wonderful example of collaboration between Peace Corps volunteers, Rotarians from around the world, and others to bring vision services and reading books to children in rural schools.
Unpacking books at a rural school in Costa Rica 2015.
Nothing like curling up under a desk with a new book and a friend!
Osa Peninsula November 2015
My first experience in 2015 was in the Osa Peninsula visiting small schools, one as small as 11 students, who had few if any reading books. In most schools the libraries we distributed contained about 200 books including some books for teachers. The Disney books were among the most popular. Teachers would say that they could not tell if kids could read or not because with only a few books that every kids had heard for years, they didn't know if the kids were reading or reciting form memory. If rural kids don't learn to ready well in elementary school, they cannot compete when they go to the larger schools in the city for high school.