With a $3000 grant from the Dr. Seuss Foundation, the three founders of From Books to Brilliance purchased 967 books in Managua for beginning and intermediate readers. In 2007 Maggie Covill, Emily Lopez Padilla and Kim Covill planned to create a library in a remote village of central Nicaragua. To their delight, much of the literature was locally written and published, perfectly suitable for its future readers.
While volunteering with a medical delegation from the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston (UTMB), the founders placed their precious cargo atop an old yellow school bus, the vehicle that would transport the doctors, dentists, nurses, medical students, and translators to Mulukuku. Packed with luggage and supplies to last for three weeks, the bus seemed overloaded. Nonetheless, they headed to the Maria Luisa Ortiz Women’s Cooperative, knowing that bunkbeds, mosquito nets, good food and clean water awaited them.
The idea for a book project began the summer before, after Kim visited an elementary school in the nearby village of Santa Rita, while translating for the delegation. In a one-room, unpainted and windowless shack she was appalled to see students doing math problems on a worn-out blackboard and scraps of paper. In tropical heat and humidity, the children sat in old wooden desks on a dirt floor. There were no books. After introducing herself and with the children listening, the teacher declared “Estos niños no tienen futuro,” or “These children have no future.” Shocked by that reality, Kim began to promote the future of those students through a simple, yet powerful literacy program.
Prior to the founders’ arrival in Mulukuku, the women had no knowledge of the existence of Biblioteca Samuel Vidaurre. They were unaware that these children’s books would be the catalyst for reopening a small library that had been closed for twenty years. Cooperative president Grethel Sequeira explained. In the mid-1980s Samuel Vidaurre, the son of a local farmer, succeeded in educating himself and emerged as the town’s only teacher. A modest collection of reference books and literature were still on the shelves.
One day in 1987, Grethel, husband Noel, their four young children, and teacher Samuel needed to travel to a nearby town. Though fearful, due to unrest during the Sandinista-Contra war, the group set out on their journey, but armed guerillas detained them on their way back home. Seeing Samuel’s uncalloused hands, the soldiers determined that he was educated and a threat to their cause. Without warning the town’s teacher was shot in the head. Severely wounded, Samuel was placed on the truck bed and driven back to Mulukuku. He died in transit. The library closed.
Twenty years later, with almost a thousand new children’s books, this village library began again to serve its community. The three founders and their idea of bringing literacy to a desperately impoverished community, became the next chapter in the story of Biblioteca Samuel Vidaurre.
