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Executive Director Visits Partner in Costa Rica
by Rachel Lewis

costaricachildIBP sorts, packs, and ships hundreds of thousands of books each year, but we rarely get to see the books being used in our partner schools and libraries overseas. In May, my husband, Matt, and I led a study abroad trip through Asbury University to Costa Rica which included several days volunteering with one of IBP’s recipient partners, the Give-a-Book Foundation. In December, IBP shipped a sea container of 60,000 new English and Spanish books to this partner just outside Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose.

On Monday, the group helped sort and organize the books at the donated warehouse space in San Jose. It was like being in IBP’s warehouse, but in Costa Rica! On Tuesday, we delivered books and helped teach English at the Lady Gladys School, which provides free education to students in a very poor neighborhood in San Jose. It was humbling to see the passion and determination of the school’s founder, John Hawker, as he described the challenges of opening and running a charitable school.

On Wednesday, we took English books to a public school outside of San Jose. We spent several hours practicing English with the English classes meeting that day. The older students proudly read their new English chapter books to us, while the younger students boisterously practiced their English animal vocabulary with the large, colorful “Big Books” we had donated.

The trip reminded me how important IBP’s book donation program is to the hundreds of schools we serve. Even in Costa Rica, a country that invests heavily in education, the public school did not have basic library books for the students to practice their reading skills. It reminded me that even though we don’t always see it first-hand, our books help fill a huge educational void in much of the developing world.bar

 
 
 
 
 
 
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