By Rosario Obregón (Peruvian writing from the United States)
Mi Primer Libro Perú (My First Book Peru) is the product of the encounter between necessity and opportunity: between the scarcity in one part of the world and the abundance in others. From 2016, thanks to the generosity of diverse institutions and through the volunteer work, which includes teachers, librarians, university students, and entire families, we procured the rescue of thousands of picturebooks in California, USA, and we sent them to initiatives in Peru, particularly those aimed at reclaiming the role of thousands teachers, and promoters of the first learning level of the public education system. The value of those books resides in the rich visual content that they offer. We saw the opportunity to promote first reading experiences based on the images, textures, forms, diverse art styles, and themes represented in thousands of books that, having completed their circulation in one part of the world, find a new purpose, new readers in new geographies.
COVID brought us technological transformations which under other circumstances would have taken a long time to materialize and gave us the opportunity to create remote training meetings with many of the recipients of these books. Standing out among these was an extraordinary group of women, teachers, reading promoters and mothers that meet the needs of just over 1200 boys and girls enrolled in educational institutions at the first learning level in the province of Yauyos, Peru.
Under the leadership of the then level specialist, Mary Yataco, and her team of ‘Docentes Fortaleza’ (specially trained teacher leaders) and accompanied by Caroll Castro, founder of ‘Ucumari Cartonero’, a training program was developed prior to the arrival of the books. This allowed teachers and promoters to familiarize themselves with their contents and prepare them for the interactions that would take place through them. Five books were allocated per child, distributed through 1200 ‘Bibliomochilas’ (book rucksacks), travel packs managed by the families themselves, who transported and circulated the books according to schedules agreed upon between teachers and families in both rural and urban areas, bibliographic deserts which are so common in the country.
The possibility of exposing the children participating in the program to the 6000 books that are circulating in the geographical area covered by the Local Education Management Unit (UGEL), Yauyos, also gave us the opportunity to establish academic alliances with institutions like the Faculty of Early Education School of Education’s Early Childhood Education Program at the Catholic University of Peru through Carmen Sandoval, advisor to the group of students of the ‘Social Responsibility Team’, whose contribution was decisive for the arrival and distribution of the books. Another strategic strand was the research in charge of Diana Cruz, a scholarship student at the University of Glasgow in the Erasmus Mundus Masters Programme ‘Children’s Literature, Media and Culture’ who also accompanied the project… (See Part 2).
