Project Launch:

In the community of Santa Cruz de Leon Cortes there are limited activities for children under the age of 7, preventing peer socialization at a young age, and driving kids to stay in the house with their mothers and watch television. A $500 grant from World Connect’s Kids to Kids program in 2009 supported a bi-monthly story hour with the children who use the Nutrition Center. Mothers share the duty of reading stories to the children every two weeks, and after the story the children have the opportunity to make something artistic. In addition to providing a ready resource for families in educating their children, a goal is also to show mothers how child development can be stimulated by books; many people in the community don’t know how to bond with their children. The idea for the library started because a mother asked the Peace Corps Volunteer in the community at the time to bring back a few books from the U.S. to read to her daughter. Seeing how much the child enjoyed the books, it made sense to expand the project and now all of the mothers are accustomed to reading to their children after lunch in the Center.