Kiitos, gracias and THANK YOU to Jelena Leppänen and Aino Huotari! After two visits to Lobitos, Jelena and Aino have formed a special bond with this beautiful community and the people who live here. During their most recent trip, they were shooting footage for a documentary about a local surfer. Before visiting, they collected toys and school supplies which they brought with them to Lobitos.
As part of their fundraising campaign for THE MARCO POLO DOCUMENTARY, Aino and Jelena also raised €540 for Libros a Lobitos! Thank you girls for your continued support of educational initiatives in Lobitos, Peru. We are so grateful and can't wait until your next visit!
Monday, July 6, 2015
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Welcome to the team, Mariajose!
¡Mil gracias a Mariajose Coronado por formar parte de
nuestro equipo de Marketing en redes sociales!
Mariajose está estudiando administración y marketing en Universidad
ESAN. Después de visitarnos en
Biblioteca Lobitos y hacer un voluntariado con nosotros, se ha agregado a
nuestro equipo. ¡Chequean el nuevo video
que hizo sobre Libros a Lobitos!
Thanks so much to Mariajose Coronado, the newest part of our Social Media and marketing team! Mariajose is an administration and marketing student from Universidad ESAN and we are so happy to have her working with us to further educational initiatives in Lobitos. ¡Gracias Mariajose!
Monday, March 23, 2015
Let´s See How Far We´ve Come!
With such massive dreams for the future of education in Lobitos, it is easy to walk into the library and see it as one giant to-do list. There are boxes of books with nowhere to go because we have literally run out of shelf space for the amount of donations we´ve received. There are always floors to be swept, books to be dusted and turtles to be fed.
We were recently hit with el niño rains and waterproofing the library and fixing the leaky roof suddenly leaped to the top of our priority list. Then, there are the more personal tasks: write up a class roster of secondary school kids who might be interested in an intensive English course, drop by Helen´s house to bring her the copy of Pinocchio that she forgot after our Junior Librarian´s meeting (and incidentally wind up talking to her mom about tamales for an hour), ask Carmencita what she thinks about The Cat in the Hat…and the list goes on and on and on…
On top of
time constraints, our internet situation has been a bit dodgy and I haven´t been
as good at updating the social media for L.A.L. as I would like to be. There has been A LOT going on at Biblioteca
Lobitos and there are loads of upcoming plans as we wrap up summer vacation and
classes begin again.
But, before
we get ahead of ourselves, I´d like to take a minute to pause and look back at
the beginning. Although we may have a
long way to go, we´ve also come a long way.
I´d also like to take this opportunity to formally thank everyone who
donated to our Indiegogo campaign!
Thanks to our lovely contributors, we raised nearly 2,000 USD! This money will make a huge difference in the
advancement of our projects in Lobitos.
We invite you to keep an eye on our money and watch us put it to good
use. Each month we will continue to
publish a detailed accounting update so you can see exactly where your
hard-earned money is going. It seems
like the only fair thing to do :)
Monday, February 9, 2015
January Accounting Update
Transparency is a fundamental component of our
organizational philosophy. We believe
that a key part of expressing respect and gratitude for our donors is taking
the time to show you exactly where your money is going.
We have been operating with a very small budget
but, as we grow, we promise to remain committed to making wise decisions about
where money is spent. We believe in
keeping administrative costs low so that the kids in Lobitos can see the direct
impact of incoming funds.
Where did our funds come from in January?
Our little January BBQ fundraiser at La Casona brought in 120 Peruvian Nuevo Soles
(about 40 USD). MUCHAS gracias to
everyone who helped sell tickets and everyone who came out and helped us grill
up chorizos (and eat them, of course).
It was lots of fun showing off the library the day before opening and
hanging out with all of you lovely people.
We were also fortunate enough to receive a little
extra help from our friends at www.qempo.com last month in the form of an 80
USD donation. Qempo is a socially-minded
startup business run by one of our Libros a Lobitos founders. For each order made through their website,
one dollar is donated to the Lobitos Library!
In total, we spent 455 nuevo soles (about 150 USD)in January.
Here´s where that money went:
Let there be luz!
165 nuevo soles (approx. 50 USD) went towards supplies to install outlets in
the library! Lucky for us, our good
friends at www.lobitosinfo.com
are also master electricians and didn´t charge us anything for the
installation. The next step will be
getting some fans to plug in to those outlets so we can survive the hot Lobitos
summer!
52 nuevo soles (approx. 20 USD) was spent on paint last month as part
of the beautification of our library. We
also had lots of friends come out and donate free labor. Thanks guys!
Hope you´re not burnt out on painting yet… soon we´ll be starting work
on the outside of the library! Keep
checking our facbeook page for details and come give a hand if you are around!
With all of the commotion going on to get Biblioteca
Lobitos ready for opening, we were calling in on a lot of favors! Luckily our handy dandy red phone never let
us down…46 nuevo soles (approx. 20 USD) went to communication costs (this also includes the cost
of printing fliers to spread the word about the project throughout Lobitos).
56 nuevo soles (approx. 20 USD) went to random construction odds and ends; a
few screws and nails here, a replacement wheelbarrow tire there. We sure have learned a lot of new tool
vocabulary in Spanish this month!
The last 136 nuevo soles (about 40 USD) went towards school
supplies. We think these crayons,
scissors and construction paper have been put to great use by our wonderfully
creative kids but don´t take our word for it…see for yourself!
This project is currently operating "hand to mouth" which is neither sustainable nor fair to the children using our facilities. Our goal is to raise 9850 USD in order to set up a fully functioning community library and operate it for the entire year of 2015. Without your help, we cannot guarantee that the library will be open all year. With just one day left on our online fundraising campaign, the time to contribute is now!
If you are unable to make a financial contribution at the moment, don´t worry, there are many other ways to help this project gain momentum! Keep helping us spread the word about this project.
- Put us in touch with people you know who work in education and have the resources to help our project.
- Invite your friends to like our Facebook Page
- Share our Indiegogo page on your facebook wall or on other social networks.
- Donate Spanish language books and/or educational materials to the project.
- If you are in Lobitos, come by and help us in the library. There´s plenty to do!
Together we can do great things for some great kids over here in Lobitos!
Monday, January 19, 2015
Crunch time!
The transformation continues! We have been putting in some long days getting Biblioteca Lobitos ready for opening over the last week. Thanks to the help of this lovely community and a little extra financial support from friends abroad, we are almost there! Have a look for yourself:
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Please, no throwing dirt in the libary!
Wow, a lot has
happened since our last blog update! We have
been busy, busy, busy getting ready to open on January 20th. Since we announced our inauguration date at
the event ESTAMOS AQUI, we have been hard at work painting, pick axing, pouring
concrete and, of course, collecting lots and lots of books. With just 9 days until opening there are no
signs of stopping! Check out what we have
been up to:
Big thanks to everyone for your help and hard work! Gracias!
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