University of Minnesota Students Lend a Hand at HB
The week of January 10th, a group of students from the University of Minnesota spent a couple hours a day helping out at the library. Every year a group of students come to volunteer at Centro Ecologico Akumal (CEA), and through the library’s ongoing collaboration with CEA, the students found their way to HB last year where they helped us put up a tire swing.
The collaboration worked out so well, that this year CEA staff arranged for them to come back and help at HB. Students sorted, dusted and helped organize our overflowing shelves in the English annex, a labor-intensive task that was very overdue! They also helped dust and straighten the shelves of our Spanish language collection in our main building.
And so it wouldn’t be all work and no play, they helped make 2 piñatas for a small King’s Day celebration, which they decorated with the kids and the kids got to break it once it was dried and filled.
Thank you to all the students and their professor, as well as to CEA and their staff for this wonderful collaboration, we hope to continue it in 2012!
HB Receives Donation from Rotary Club Of Asheville-Biltmore, North Carolina!
Last summer we had an email from Jim, who had visited the library several times and had made a personal donation. He belongs to an International Rotary Club in North Carolina which he described as “similar to Hekab Be, small in size but big in spirit!” He was looking for a worthy cause that his club could support, he asked if HB would be interested—we of course answered with a resounding “yes please!”
A number of months went by and we didn’t hear anything but we had a wonderful surprise at the end of December when he contacted to us to say they would be arriving in January with a donation large enough to help us cover over a month of operating expenses—We couldn’t have asked for a nicer way to start out the new year! Thank you Asheville-Biltmore Rotarians for getting us off to a GREAT start in 2011!!
Update on Leo
Leo started chemotherapy in early January and is back in Quintana Roo, overseeing her school in Tulum. Although she remains with the library in heart and soul, for the time being she needs to use her energies for healing, so we won’t be seeing her around the library much these days. We ask that everyone keeps this wonderful woman in their prayers!
University of Minnesota students up to their eyeballs in books they sorted in our English Annex!
U of Minn students and kids put the finishing touches on a pinata they made!
Kids line up to break the turtle pinata they made with the help of U of Minn students (on left) who joyfully look on.
