Owen Johnson, the writer of today’s blog entry, is a La Crosse community member and a seasoned Global Partners volunteer to Nicaragua! Here he shares about the team’s experience this week setting up the new lending library in Nueva Santa Celia.
The Education team this week has successfully installed a lending library in in one of the houses in Nueva Santa Celia. Our work week began Monday morning when we shopped for books at a very impressive book store in Managua to add to the books we brought with us. We spread out and selected books for possible purchase. I spent some of my time there photographing the team members shopping for books. It was like watching kids in a candy store. Before checking out, we picked out the best selections from our pile.
Tuesday we traveled to Nueva Santa Celia to install the library. By the time we left at the end of the day we had recorded nearly 500 books in the manual system and categorized them as reference, fiction, or non-fiction. On Wednesday we stopped at an organic coffee plantation on the way to NSC and put in a request for 40 pounds of coffee for pickup on Friday. At the new library we registered 40 kids as library patrons and checked out their first books. They were all allowed to borrow one book on the first day. We also trained Carla, her daughter and two other young people as as librarians and guardians of the library. Many older kids were out working as coffee Pickers as coffee picking season has just started. It was heartwarming to see kids from 5 to 12 years old excited to get a book to take home. Many of them didn’t get farther than the front porch before they sat down to read their book. We watched as older kids sat and read to their younger siblings.
Our evenings have been enjoyable as the Education Team and the Medical Team have gone out for dinner together which gives us a chance to learn about each other’s activities.
By Owen Johnson
Central America 
Thank you for sharing the pictures and what is happening in the library Owen. How exciting yo be there!