Escuela de Arte y Oficios, Inc.
Located in the economically disadvantaged Northeastern Sector of Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, the Escuela de Arte y Oficios organizes educational programs and training that benefit 500 students from the eleven communities that are located in this Sector—an area with a population of 30,000, a significant number of whom are among the poorest people in the city. CIEE’s matching grant is underwriting the development of a Mini-Library and Community Information Center that will serve not only its own students, but other students who live in those eleven communities.
In the entire city of Santiago, there are only two public libraries, both of which are very far from the Northeastern Sector. The new Library and Center will provide access to knowledge that students in this Sector typically are unable to access, and will encourage them to learn through interacting creatively with various forms of information: encyclopedias, scholarly texts, thematic dictionaries, and the Internet.
The project’s goals include: raising the educational and cultural levels of the school population in the Sector; empowering the eleven local communities to manage new types of cultural and educational activities; integrating the public educational centers in the management, daily activities and future development of this project; and integrating the principal personnel of the regional Secretary of Culture and the Secretary of Education in the administration, development and maintenance of the Mini-Library and Community Information Center.
CIEE student volunteers will be able to work hand in hand with community assistants to train the Center’s users, including both teachers and students from the five public schools within the Northeastern Sector. They will also be able to work with children as “cultural animators,” reading stories aloud to them, playing reading and comprehension-based games with them, and guiding thematic reading groups. They will additionally be able to accompany the Center’s personnel to visit local school and other neighborhood centers, providing information about the Center and promoting the use of its services to community members. The Center’s leadership also hopes that some CIEE students will be able to participate in the Center’s administrative coordination and in the ongoing planning and development of its future educational and cultural activities.