TMS Library - Take Two

As things continue to progress with cataloguing books, I need to make an important addendum to my previous post. I mentioned those who donated books through the coordinated school efforts and did not include our first sets of donations. These came from our friends Suzanne and Christine, Suzanne's students, and my grandmother and aunt. These books were the first to arrive and have been put to use for individual read-alouds and for one-on-one work with students. Many students request the Dr. Seuss books to re-read and we are looking forward to reading my personal favorite from fourth grade, Charlotte's Web! Since we've been using these books for nearly a year now, somehow they seem to have slipped my mind while working on the current catalog, but I assure you, we really appreciate them! All will find a permanent home in the library.


And, for all of you who want to help the library become functional, I have linked directly to the Peace Corps Partnership site on the righthand side of the page to make it easy to submit a donation (you can also click here). Our goal is to fulfill the grant request as soon as possible so we can purchase the supplies we need for shelves, chairs, and tables.


Thank you once again!

Trinity Methodist School Library Project

The books just arrived!

Ginnie has been working diligently (with a lot of help from Anthony and students and staff of Trinity and Wesley College) to establish a library/resource center for the children and teachers of Trinity Methodist School.  During the past year, donations were collected at Mount Ida College and South Elementary School (in Massachusetts) to be sent to Trinity for the library project.  In addition, a generous donation was made by Hyde Shipping Corporation and a grant was provided by Kids to Kids, an organization based in Massachusetts that supports projects in education, athletics, and the arts.  It is a grand project and is moving along slowly but surely.  We are grateful to everyone whose assistance supports this library.

Thanks to the children of South Elementary School in Hingham, Ginnie’s mother’s co-workers in South Carolina, and the students and staff of Mount Ida, over 4000 books were collected to start a library.  As of now, we still have a lot of work to do and have established a Peace Corps Partnership Program grant application to support the cost of shipping the books and purchasing much-needed materials for shelves, fans, and supplies for the library.  The students and teachers at Trinity are working hard to catalog and organize books, as well as fundraise for building shelves and other supplies.  

The Mount Ida College Outing club supported the project by fronting the money to ship books to Florida where they were then taken by Hyde Shipping for transfer to Belize.  As a non-profit organization, college student fees are unable to be used for this purpose, so a percentage of the grant will cover those shipping costs.

  When the books arrived at school, many students were eager to get right into them.  With the assistance of boys in Standards 5 and 6, all 63 boxes were moved to the library space on the second floor.  Some students from Standard 6 came in to look at what we received and helped open up the boxes.  When I turned to speak to a student, the others had already found a book and were perusing them.

 

Every day, students come to visit the library and browse through the books to read them during breaks.  We will soon start our library committee to oversee the borrowing of books and establish a library club of student monitors who can help maintain the space and participate in planning library activities.  We dream of a space that will be used forever at the school and will serve the community as well.  The teachers and students will benefit from the direct usage of books and reference materials and parents and siblings will be able to borrow books and use the space for research on projects of their own.

 Wesley College Students label and alphabetize books

  

This is the only shelf space we have, currently books are stacked by level; by adding shelves to the library, we will be able to shelve books in a more user-friendly way

As we continue our progress, I’ll keep you posted with pictures and stories.  If you are interested in supporting the project, please visit the Peace Corps Partnership site by clicking here.