IBBY-Yamada 2014: Peru

Pamplona Alta in the San Juan de Miraflores suburb of Lima has grown rapidly as rural farmers have migrated to the city. Though poor, the area has had sufficient initiative to build roads and houses and five years ago a library was established in the Cristina Beatriz School. The library is used by the school children and the community of Pamplona Alta.

IBBY Peru supported the improvement of the library by providing books and specialized training for the teachers and parents. The books included those published by IBBY Peru with stories of daily life and legends from the eight different regions of Peru, as well as a selection of other children’s books appropriate to each age group. The training of teachers included reading motivation techniques as well as library organization and administration. In Pamplona Alta, the parents have only limited formal education and many of the women are illiterate. The workshops with the parents emphasized the importance of reading in the development of the child and of children rights in general.

The teachers at the school have reported that the impact of the library is overwhelmingly positive: the children were interested in the books and proud to take them home to show their parents, and over time they were able to improve their vocabulary and reading comprehension