By Debora Gambetta Paim | Institutional Development Intern
...but it takes only one child to change the village!
Dear supporters,
Today I am going to tell you the story of a changemaker. Rael is a young man who became a reference in his community after taking action by engaging other people towards the realization of his dream. He was born in Campina de São Benedito, a little community in the state of Amapá, in the Brazilian Amazon forest.
Rael was only 16 when he became a volunteer at our library project after being part of an event in which he was introduced to the values of the organization and trained to be a reading mediator. In 2011, even though he and the other volunteers were very dedicated to the project, the school where the library took place by the time closed due to the lack of teachers and the activities had to cease. Rael was not happy about that and, after a visit from the Vaga Lume team, he realized that the problem was the people in the community did not feel the library was theirs and he decided to do something.
In order to keep the project alive, Rael convinced 42 people to help him to organize and build a room, a little house to keep the books. However, before the actual construction, they had to organize parties, ask people from other communities for help and material as well as take other initiatives - together - to raise money. Little did he know that, during this process, the people would become aware of their power as a group and put their effort together for the common interest, even beyond his proposal. As a result, not only the library would have its own premises, but they were also able to bring new teachers to the community and reactivate the abandoned school.
For us, when the community takes the initiative of managing the library itself and the people see it as their own, not just borrowed books from someone else, Vaga Lume is closer to reaching its goals. The action of building the premises, which were inaugurated in 2013 during a Vaga Lume expedition to Macapá, is evidence that the people there are taking responsibility for the library. For that reason, we are very proud to inform you that initiatives like Rael´s give our work meaning. With your support, we are able to give young people the opportunity to become active, engage in their communities and change the reality they live in. Together, we empower amazon children by showing them other cultures and broadening their minds with books.
Nowadays, the people of Campina de São Benedito are proud to say they are related to Rael and we are proud to say we have motivated him. Aren´t you also proud? Well, you should be…
Other stories and news are available at www.vagalume.org.br/english.
Feel free to drop us a line!
Kind thoughts,
Vaga Lume Team
Links:
By Marina Rodrigues | Project Leader, on behalf of Vaga Lume Team
By Vaga Lume | Team
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