Books, books and more books

We are rapidly running out of space in our house as it fills up with books. We are overwhelmed by the response already to the Book-a-thon. We have to say thank you to friends, citizens of Walkley and employees of the Peak District National Park Authority who have donated books as well as videos, CD-roms and a few other things. Thank you also to Sam of Walkley Community Centre for her help and enthusiasm.

Highlights so far?

Toilets of the World, Blue Peter: The Inside Story, How a Power Station Works and The Scientific History of Sheffield!

And plenty of recent novels are rolling in. We have lots of adventure, crime, sci-fi, fantasy and literary novels including some Whitbread and Booker nominees. Fan of Sharpe? There's a good run of novels featuring him.

We also have received board games, a hamster home, a computer keyboard, scanner...oh...and a pair of running shorts!

We also have some offers of cakes and Art in the Park are going to organise board games.

So do come along if you're in Sheffield on the 15th September and relax with a cuppa, a cake and a good read...or two...or more.

Bill & Georgia

Walkley Book-a-thon

We are organising the 1st Great Walkley Book-a-thon to raise funds for both projects we will be working on in Guatemala.

Saturday the 15^th September, 2.00 – 5.00pm at Walkley Community Centre, Fir St, Walkley, Sheffield S6.

We will be selling second-hand books as well as tea, coffee, soft drinks and cakes. We may have some board games too. Please come along if you can.

If you have any spare old books you would like to donate we would be very grateful for them. We would also be grateful for any cakes anyone would like to bake and for any help on the day selling books and refreshments and making cups of tea and coffee.

Please let either Georgia or me know if you fancy helping or donating books/cakes in anyway. We’d like to collect books in advance so its not too much of a rush on the day (if you would like to drop them off at ours that would be lovely). We can also receive books on the 15^th at the Community Centre between 1.00 and 2.00pm.

Central America

We are going to Central America at the beginning of October for nearly six months, returning just after Easter.

Part of why we are going is to volunteer on a couple of community library/literacy projects for Mayan children and families in rural Guatemala. These communities suffered greatly under Reagan’s war in Central America in the 1980s. Whole Mayan communities killed or maltreated by both the government army and rebels. Mayan communities are still marginalised in a society dominated by the Hispanic-mixed majority. However, many are trying to rebuild themselves, some with help from NGOs, some as small-scale volunteer projects initiated by individuals in the communities themselves. Many children do not go to school after about 10 or 11 because their families cannot afford the £30 per year secondary school fees or allow them time away from working on the land to feed themselves. About 50% of the Guatemalan population can't read apart from the simplest words. Books are relatively very expensive and libraries scarce.

We will both be volunteering on a project called Ix-canaan in the north of the country during November and December. They have raised funds to build a clinic, library, internet centre and women’s cultural centre. There are more details of their work here – http://ixcanaan.blogspot.com

Georgia will then become a volunteer mobile librarian on a biblio bus run by Child Aid in January. This takes books to different Mayan villages once a month for children to borrow. They also have reading sessions. http://www.child-aid.org/wa/child/aid/C13

We will be posting our experiences and photos here as regularly as we can. We hope you can check us out now and again.

Love, Bill and Georgia