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Boone trades books for Bolivian culture |
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Thursday, 08 November 2007 |
 Appalachian graduate Laura Howell poses for a photograph with school children whose parents are prisoners. In Bolivia, children live with their incarcerated parents and are allowed to leave to attend school. Special to The Appalachian
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by JILLIAN SWORDS
News Reporter
Appalachian State University has a sister. She is modest, her one-story frame built on Bolivian soil from practical plaster and concrete, run by volunteers, proudly housing around 4,600 books. Her name is Biblioteca Th’uruchapitas.
Program Director Dr. Linda E. Veltze became involved with the Sister Library program in the early 1990s.
As a professor of library science in the education department, she saw Bolivian author Gaby Vallejo’s presentation on the library project she and six other women founded in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Children’s books are a precious commodity in third-world countries such
as Bolivia, Veltze said. In-country publishers normally solicit only
textbooks, and customs and import taxes would make them unaffordable to
the public.
At normal Bolivian libraries, books cannot be checked out or brought into schools.
 Dr. Russell E. Bachert of Appalachian State University reads a book to children in the library. Special to The Appalachian
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“I became so amazed at the hard work [the founders] did for no budget;
they got no salary,” Veltze said. “They did it for no other reason than
the love of the children of their country and the belief that all
children, regardless of whether they were born into a rich or a poor
home, deserve the right to have children’s books as part of their
youth,” she said.
In 1999, Veltze discovered the nationwide Sister Libraries program.
“I read the description of the program and it sounded like what we were
already doing, which was to form a relationship between [two
institutions from different countries] and share resources, but the
Sister Libraries system officially recognized the project,” Veltze
said.
Appalachian was the first university to join the program, which is composed of hundreds of libraries across the country.
Once accredited, Appalachian and the surrounding community fundraised enough money to send a shipment of books to Cochabamba.
Dr. Terry Sack and Dr. Al Green of Appalachian’s department of
education, who have since retired, were leading groups of students on
study abroad trips to Bolivia. They agreed to personally carry the
books across with their students to avoid the crippling customs fees.
“It was through [Sack’s and Green’s] generosity and the generosity of
their students that we got the model of how we were going to do it,”
Veltze said. “Every year they would bring the books, and every year
they would come back with stories...of the children, of how the ladies
at the library cried when the first books arrived.”
“One little boy was sitting off in the corner [of the library, and when
asked what he was doing] he said, ‘My friend didn’t get to come today,
and I wanted him to be able to read this wonderful story, so I’m
copying it for [him],’” Veltze said.
Connie Abernathy, an Appalachian education graduate student and fourth
grade teacher at Oxford Elementary, is among the community members who
have helped fundraise for the books.
“It was [my students’] idea to raise the money,” Abernathy said. “I
explained to them how they really need to appreciate their libraries
here, and seeing their faces when they learned that kids just like them
don’t have [basic things] like libraries made me realize we needed to
help.”
Her students had the idea of holding a used book sale at the school, in
which they raised $376 for the purchase of books to be sent to
Th’uruchapitas.
Abernathy also did a research project that studied how her students
became more globally aware after participating in the project.
“I explained to them how American money is worth four or five times as
much in Bolivia,” she said. “[Projects like this] are so important,
especially for fourth graders. I find they don’t know anything outside
their own lives. Most of these kids barely get outside Hickory. This
broadened their minds.”
Emily E. Coffey, a library science graduate student, is interning in
the library of Valley Crucis Elementary School. She was planning on an
exercise to raise awareness for Asian Americans for her students, a
topic of personal interest to her.
Upon learning about Th’uruchapitas, however, “I thought it was rather selfish of me to do anything else,” Coffey said.
“[The seven Bolivian founders] are some of the nicest people I’ve ever
met. A lot of what they do is out of pocket. Most of them are
schoolteachers - they’re not well paid, and they have to work another
job just to keep themselves fed.”
Her students held a penny drive and raised $23.35.
“I think they’re pretty proud of themselves,” Coffey said. “Many of
them expressed in surveys [handed out afterwards] they didn’t think it
was going to be enough [to] solve the problems in Bolivia. I think this
was very mature and showed a lot of responsibility.”
“A lot of [my students] are fairly well provided for and sometimes it’s
hard for them to remember there’s not only people out there who have
less than them, but [those with] almost nothing,” Coffey said. “It’s
eye-opening that there are kids just like them without the same
opportunities. It gave them a sense of…almost injustice…that there are
kids without the things they don’t think twice about.”
Veltze said in recent years, Appalachian and the High Country community
have sent between $5,000 and $6,000 a year to the library. They are
currently raising money to buy a plot of land and a new structure for
the library.
“Bolivia is a democracy,” Veltze said. “To be a functioning democracy
you have to have a literate people who can think for themselves and
participate in their government.”
Rebecca Brey, a former Appalachian student, is a media specialist at Wilkes Central High School.
Two years ago, she traveled to Th’uruchapitas with Veltze. While there,
she worked with the library volunteers and experienced both the
cultural richness and devastating poverty of a third-world country.
“Had I never gone on this trip, I would have never have known the
difference,” Brey said. “[The hardest part] was seeing the children
begging for money, seeing how hard they work and how little education
they have.”
Veltze emphasized that the project’s aim was not to bring western culture to Bolivia.
“If you get involved in helping someone, you really need to know and
form some kind of bond with [them],” Veltze said. “[Otherwise] you keep
yourself elevated and never get to know them [and their culture].”
The next trip to Cochabamba will be in January. Those interested may contact her at
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