Catholic school ‘book buddies’ find
friends south of the border
Aug 1999
By Nancy Westlund, Herald Staff
reprinted by permission
Imagine an elementary school classroom without books, a city full of schools without libraries and parents who have never known the joy of reading bedtime stories to their children.
The tiny Mexican community of San Felipe on the Baja Peninsula was just such a place until the arrival two years ago of former Sacramento Catholic schools teacher Kay Gabbard. Gabbard, who retired to San Felipe with her husband, Bill, was thinking of doing some volunteer work in elementary schools and visited several classrooms.
She says she was amazed at what she found.
"In most classrooms the teachers’ only tools were their manuals and a blackboard. There were no books and no libraries," she said. "So I turned to my friends in the Sacramento Diocese for help."
Gabbard told Barbara Schuchart, a first grade teacher she knew at St. John Vianney School in Rancho Cordova, about the book crisis in San Felipe. And Schuchart passed the word on to principal Vicky Andrews, who decided to make buying books for the children in San Felipe a Lenten project.
"We felt buying books was really a worthy cause," Andrews said. "It was something they could relate to - children their own age who don’t have books."
Funds collected by the students brought a wealth of books in Spanish to one of the poorest schools in San Felipe.
"When the school bell rang on the day the books arrived," Gabbard said, "neither the students nor the faculty wanted to go into the classroom."
"Book Buddies" was born and quickly began to grow.
St. Robert School in Sacramento had also heard about the San Felipe classrooms without books from Gabbard, a former teacher at their school, and responded to the need. Led by the fourth grade class, a book drive netted several hundred dollars to purchase books. School families also donated a large quantity of paper, computers, clothing and other items to their new buddies in Mexico.
Gail Sherman, former principal of St. Robert’s, says that pictures sent by Gabbard of San Felipe students enjoying the books given to them by book buddies was part of a positive learning experience.
"The students could see where the books went, learned how a few cents went a long way and how much happiness it brought," Sherman said.
Other diocesan schools supporting the project include St. Charles Borromeo School in Sacramento and Holy Rosary School in Woodland.
Holy Rosary principal Jeannie Venturini says a visit to the school by the Gabbards last year in which students were shown photos of children of San Felipe "captured the hearts" of children and teachers alike. Last year Holy Rosary raised more than $600 for books and is planning to collect toys and organize a Christmas stocking project for San Felipe during the 1999-2000 school year.
And St. Charles Borromeo, Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Sister Maureen Fitzgerald, principal, reported that after a visit by the Gabbards, the student council coordinated fund-raisers to purchase books for San Felipe and school supplies were sent to classrooms.
Thanks to student in four diocesan schools, one San Felipe elementary school now has over 400 books. And Gabbard reports that many children now go to their new libraries instead of breaking for recess.
"The experience of many of these children is limited to San Felipe, but books can open the world to them," she said.
Gabbard’s goal is to eventually help each of San Felipe’s 12 elementary schools establish a mini-library*. In anticipation of that day, one school has already held a workday to clean up an old storeroom for the books they hope to receive.
For more information on "Book Buddies," contact Kay Gabbard at PMB 236, P.O. Box 9019, Calexico, CA 92232 or email gabbard@sanfelipe.com.mx
The Catholic Herald
Sacramento, California
August 14, 1999, p.4,5
*correction: there are 10 elementary schools in San Felipe
Project Coordinator: Kay Gabbard
gabbard@sanfelipe.com.mx
Last update to this site: September 2003
This site provided to Book Buddies by Inet-Toolbox
Copyright ©1999-2003
| 
Bookstore