Manglarito celebrates the opening of their new library.

On Saturday morning, the small community of Manglarito, situated in a gorgeous rural mountain setting, came together to celebrate the opening of their new library.  This heartfelt project was started by Connie Hess, Terry Phipps and Christine Mann of Altos Del Maria last April after visiting this neighboring community and seeing the desire and need for a local reading center.   Manglarito is a small village with a population of about 350.  There is no electricity, no grocery store or any other amenities but does have the local school house.  The school has a total of 3 rooms.  The first room serves as a classroom where the sole teacher teaches up to 29 children, varying from first to 6th grade.  The second room is equipped with a long table and is used as their cafeteria, the last room was empty making it ideal to refurbish and transform into a library.  

With the support of the teacher, Senora Denia, parents and community leaders, this group of expats started working by painting, laying tiles and most importantly assembling a collection of predominantly Spanish books. Christine Mann, an experienced Librarian was able to train the parents on an old fashioned card catalog method for them to keep track of the books.
 
The celebration started around 11:00 am where the teacher said a few words expressing the villagers’ excitement in having a place where everyone could now take advantage of the all the benefits of a local library.  This renewed space can now provide them with an additional room that the school can use for lessons.  She called it a true blessing for her village!  Special thanks where given to the volunteers that contributed to this task and help made it a reality such as Mr.Alfredo Garcia of the parent teacher association, Mr. Alonso Fernandez who translated and was instrumental in coordinating donations with Billy Foster, Librarian at Balboa Academy.  The children were excited to share in the festivities by reciting poems and singing songs for the group.  The party concluded with special treats of cookies, milk and juice.

This is only a beginning; future fund raising events are being planned.  Any donations of Spanish books on popular culture, children’s picture books, educational games, dictionaries as well as some basic English books, to round out the collection and help  those wanting to learn English, are greatly appreciated.   If you want to contribute in any way, please feel free to contact them at:  connie438@gmail.com , tlphipps42@yahoo.com and cvmann@aol.com