First of all we need to welcome three new board members, James Coyne King from Boston and Richard Strock and Sam Featherstone from the Silicon Valley. Check out their backgrounds and thoughts about working with Riecken Community Libraries here.
In November many of the board of directors visited Honduras and attended a country-wide meeting of librarians, community volunteers and even some of the mayors. Many of the Hondurans had traveled for many hours on local buses to be able to meet with the rest of the Honduran Riecken network for their annual (ARBICOR) meeting.
Board Members, Jim King and Sam Featherstone, playing chess in Copán Ruinas, Honduras.
There were wonderful stories of young library volunteers eager to promote literacy telling of doing story hours for the youngest visitors outside because there was no electricity. One young librarian said he had a computer in his library but laughed when asked if he had an internet connection. “I don’t know because we don’t have electricity.”
In 2012 librarian training was held in both countries with more to come in 2013. Sessions included design of programs to encourage reading, proper techniques for organizing book collections and administrative skills.
Librarians in training in Honduras.
Late in the year we completed our 2012 Impact Study which you are welcome to view on our website and very recently we posted our 2012 Annual Report which discusses all of our successes for 2012 and our hopes and dreams for 2013 and beyond.
Literacy starts here.