Maritza Valdez is a young Bolivian woman, who has a creative and dynamic spirit. She has been working with BiblioWorks since January of 2008 and loves the work that we do. She has been dedicated to education her entire professional life.
Her job with Biblio involves many many hours on a bus traveling to our libraries. Maritza spends twenty days out of every month visiting all of the BiblioWorks libraries and making them function better. Her main role is to train the librarians in their own libraries. She works one on one with all of the librarians and members of the library committees to help solve the unique problems that each library faces in Bolivia. She is also working on projects to work with teachers and high school students so that the libraries will be better utilized.
She understands Bolivia, and knows that it is sometimes difficult to work in promoting education, where it is so poorly valued. But her passion for the children of Bolivia, make it all worthwhile for her. Maritza is a kind, open and warm person and the people in the communities from the mayors down to the children know her on a first name basis and are always asking when her next visit will be. BiblioWorks is very lucky to have Maritza working for us, and we hope her work in the new year will make our libraries function and become a center for community education and development in rural Bolivia.