Biblioworks opens two new libraries and meets goals for making libraries sustainable

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BiblioWorks has gone through many changes this year. The biggest of these is that Megan Sherar, our project coordinator in Bolivia for the past two years, is moving home to return to her family and loved ones in the United States. The work that Megan did while in Bolivia, both as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morado K’asa and as Project Coordinator for BiblioWorks is impressive and will live on long after she moves on to other challenges. I heartily thank her for her dedication to education and her passion for bettering the lives of Bolivian families. Best of luck in your future endeavors, Megan!

Over the past few months Megan has worked hard to make sure that we do not miss a beat after her departure. Most importantly she has helped us find an excellent candidate to continue the valuable work she began.

I’m delighted to announce that our new project coordinator is Matthew Lynn. Like Megan, Matt is a former Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia. He is from South Carolina, right down the road from BiblioWorks headquarters in Asheville, NC. He served his two years in a small town working at an orphanage which housed 120 underprivileged children. Since his time working as a volunteer in the orphanage, he has fallen in love with the children of Bolivia and has a passion for education and reading. We are confident that Matthew will do an excellent job! Here follows an update from Matthew on our current projects and plans for the future.

Best,
Allen Singleton
President, Biblio Charitable Works

Biblioworks has been working hard this year in Bolivia opening two new libraries in Tarabuco and Sopachuy, and creating a system of librarian training to make all of our libraries more sustainable. We are always excited about our work here, and love to work with community members here in Bolivia who are interested in creating reading habits in children and young adults! All seven of our community libraries are now well equipped with books, educational games, posters, educational videos, DVD players and TVs, furniture, and computers. For this reason this year Bibliworks will be focusing on training at the library level in all of our libraries here in Bolivia.

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This past year, we worked hard to keep our existing libraries functioning and at the same time worked with the two new libraries in Sopachuy and Tarabuco. Our biggest success this year, besides for the two libraries was getting Bolivian books into all of our libraries. Working in collaboration with local mayors’ offices and with your support we were able to purchase Bolivian novels, local school curriculum text books, atlases, encyclopedias and many more books. These books will be used on a daily basis by many Bolivian children and young adults who previously had limited or no access to these materials. Often for the average school aged child buying Bolivian text books is out of the question economically, so the fact that we were able to provide these valuable resources to our libraries is a major step towards opening children’s minds to reading!

Although we have accomplished a lot this year for the benefit of education and the children of Bolivia, we have an enormous amount of work yet to do, and still need your support to keep this important project running. This year we will be working directly in training with many groups, including our librarians, teachers, high school students, and our library committees. With each group we will cover a variety of different topics, ranging from self-esteem and leadership with high school kids, to creating reading habits with teachers, to the Dewey decimal system with the librarians, to how to raise money for the benefit of the libraries at the local level with members of the library committees. We hope to enhance these workshops and training sessions with trips to visit libraries and to provide the people behind our libraries with real and quality tools they can use to make the library an integral part of their communities. While we will be focusing on creative, interesting and dynamic library trainings, we will still need to purchase new books, furniture, computers and other materials for libraries in need of these things.

So, we know our goals are ambitious, but not impossible. We need your help to raise at least $5,000 this year to work toward making our existing libraries self sustaining. Our project here is an important part of the educational development of Bolivia, and the children of Bolivia will benefit substantially from your contributions. Please consider helping us meet this goal with a donation. Even modest amounts can translate to significant benefits for these community libraries.

Your donations at work:

A $25 donation will buy educational games for one library.

A $50 donation will buy world maps and educational posters for one library.

A $100 donation will buy additional tables and chairs for one library.

A $500 donation will buy a new set of encyclopedias for one library.

A $1500 donation will buy an entire set of books matching the local school curriculum for one library.

(For donations of $1500 or more, we will gladly place a plaque in the library of your choice to recognize your gift.)
To make a secure online donation click here:

Or, if you prefer, please send a check to:
Biblio Charitable Works, Inc.
2002 Riverside Dr. Suite 42G
Asheville, NC 28804

If we give the children of Bolivia books and a love of reading, they will have the tools they need to open up opportunities for themselves that will carry them and their families out of poverty. With your modest financial support the lives of many children and families here will be positively affected for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Matt Lynn

Latin American Project Coordinator

Biblio Charitable Works, Inc.

Sucre, Bolivia