Equipment for a classroom for the “Story – Tellers Grandmothers”
Program – Mempo Giardinelli Foundation Resistencia,
Province of Chaco
The story-tellers grandmothers program is a successful program that works with children with affective and also food necessities from poor regions in Argentina.
In order to increase the number of beneficiaries and spread out the results of the story-tellers grandmothers program, a new classroom is being constructed to train new grandmothers, teachers and librarians from different parts of the country. These grandmothers will continue telling stories to more and more children in their own places (schools, hospitals, day-care houses).
It has been observed in the past that one single story-teller can benefit more than 300 children in a year, giving them the possibility to share stories, affection and experience, preserving the traditional habit of reading.
To give the appropriate training, the room (with a capacity for 80 people) needs to be equipped with furniture and suitable equipment.
The total cost of the equipment project is ¥10.350.
Visit the site of the Mempo Giardinelli Foundation for more information on their activities. www.fundamgiardinelli.org.ar
Description:
The program aims to promote reading among the poorest schools and outlying areas of Resistencia city and its metropolitan area.
The activity consists of summoning senior citizens who have vocation and desires to read stories for children.
These Grandmothers are trained by professionals and then go to schools to be in contact with children that never or very rarely have had the opportunity of sharing a reading or just affection with their own relatives.
Strictly speaking, they are Reading Grandmothers, not storytellers. This means that the entire activity turns around the book.
The specific objective of this project is to promote the Reading since the first age, but children find additionally affect and generous loving given by the Grandmothers.
Moreover, the Program has an important impact on the self-esteem of the Grandmothers.
They are mainly instructed women in their 50-60s, excluded from the labour market by the ferocity of the Argentinean economical shock. They are volunteers for the program.
The objectives of the Story-tellers Grandmothers Program were mainly defined with the participation of everyone involved, based on proposals of the coordinators, two specialists in Pedagogy of the Reading and Literature Didactics for Children (dependent of the Training Centre of Studies of our Foundation), and some of the most experienced grandmothers.
Objectives of the program:
To promote the tradition of reading at an early age as a practice of high cultural value. This proposal aims transferring aesthetic-educative values, and creating, in the long term, citizens with critical and high demand on reading and cultural goods.
To ensure for the first time a permanent supply of cultural activities within the educational system, supporting children in risk that come from families excluded by extreme poverty and marginality.
To offer older adults the opportunity of recovering their community role, since they are expulsed by the economic system that early expels active and well enabled people from the labour market.
To preserve the traditional and beautiful habit of reading for children as one of the most effective forms of communication for the development of the identity of a community.
To create spaces and opportunities for exchanges across generations. Objectives of the project: equipment of the meeting/training area for the “Abuelas Cuenta Cuentos”
To train almost 100 volunteer readers from the Story-teller Grandmothers Program which helps 15.000 children with their reading program.
To give training to around 700 teachers and librarians from other places that try, each year, to receive an education from the FMG.
These Teachers and librarians act as intermediaries specially in isolated places of other 4 provinces (to complement the work carried out by the Grandmothers .
To provide a social and cultural space for: Working meetings for the volunteers and for the Assistance to Children dining-hall program team.
Other kind of meetings that provide a basis for cultural learning promoting interest in reading.
With the generosity and commitment from Foundation R.C. Maagdenhuis (Stichting het R.C. Maagdenhuis) and the invaluable collaboration of Ms. Paulien Klein Borg, our Foundation has been able to fulfill the goal of € 10.350towards this meaningful project.
