Inspiration: A Library for Everyone

To start out this week with interesting inspiration, here's an article we stumbled upon that was published a few months back in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Mr. Hernando "Nanie" Guanlao established "The Reading Club" for anyone who wants to read. With more than 500 titles under its name, this library of sorts for everyone, can be found in the front of his ancestral home in Balagtas St. in Barangay La Paz, Makati City. With the "Reading Club" Mr. Guanlao wanted to create a service for his community while at the same time encouraging the culture of reading.

"The Reading Club"actually began in 2000 when Mr. Guanlao built some makeshift shelves outside his house and displayed his family's collection of books. Though people initially didn't understand what Mr. Guanlao was doing, they picked up after a while that these books were there for their reading pleasure.

Mr. Nanie Guanlao, founder of "The Reading Club" shows some books on his version of the libraries mobile counterpart.

What's most interesting about the "Reading Club" though is that Mr. Guanlao says there are no rules behind this. People drop of boxes of books at his door step, sometimes anonymously, and the collection grows. But what's even more interesting is that he says "people can read, can borrow, can take home." And the "Reading Club" never closes. It's always there for people to visit and use. From students who are looking for reference books and textbooks to people who just want to read, the "Reading Club" is always open.

The Reading Club, always there. Always open.

At the end of the day, what we love most about the "Reading Club" is that Mr. Guanlao says he doesn't expect anything from this. Plain and simply, he just wants to promote literacy to people and give them the chance to read.

Read more about Mr. Guanlao in this article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

*Information for this blog entry was taken from the article published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Saturday, June 2, 2012.
*Pictures from: http://www.samutsari.info/readingclub/?m=201206

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Kind Words to End the Week

It's always nice to end the (work) week on a positive note. So here's a very nice comment we received from Ms. Joanne Tupas- Parsons on the most recent library we inaugurated at Cuyapo, Central School in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija.

Thank you for your kind words, Ms. Joanne! It's always great reading inspirational messages of thanks like yours.

If you have a message for AHON Foundation, you can like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter  or send us an email at ahonfoundation@gmail.com.

Have a GREAT week end ahead!

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Our Very First "THINKING WHILE READING" Seminar!

Over the Weekend, AHON Foundation in cooperation with our friends from Bagong Kulturang Pinoy Inc. (BKPI) conducted our very first "THINKING WHILE READING" seminar. This seminar, which is one of the newer seminar's conducted by BKPI, trains teachers in creative ways to teach reading skills to their students. The methods that participants learn here are alternative but informative and can still can be easily brought to their own classrooms.

Both BKPI and AHON Foundation possess the mission to promote a culture of reading in school children in the Philippines. So a partnership was formed on the agreement that BKPI would conduct a literacy skills teaching seminar for public school teachers from AHON Partner Schools around Metro Manila.

The two-day seminar was well attended by 30 public elementary school teachers who not only learned important skills when teaching their students to read, but also were given the chance to share with one another ideas that would build the culture of reading amongst their students. Ms. Mhea Ang See and Ms. Hazel Domingo Babiano, our ever energetic seminar facilitators from BKPI also created the perfect environment for teachers to learn and share with one another. 

Using a mixture of lectures, workshops, and dialogues, the teacher participants had dynamic discussions after every topic that was introduced to them. They learned about the concept of reading as a group activity, giving creative supplementary exercises to students after reading assignments, and the idea that reading is a process that also enhances the thinking skills of students when done properly.

At the end of two days the teachers not only learned new and important skills in teaching reading to their students but also rediscovered their enthusiasm to teach this to their students. Despite the fact that the culture of reading is not a prevalent one in the schools they teach at, they were confident that with the new creative methods they learned from AHON Foundation and BKPI’s first “Thinking While Reading Seminar fervor for reading would not be hard to plant within their students.

Congratulations to all our teacher participants!

You can view more pictures of our first Thinking While Reading Seminar HERE!

AHON Foundation would like to express our deep and heartfelt thanks to our friends from Bagong Kulturang Pinoy Inc who facilitated this two day seminar. Find out more about them and the work they do by visiting their website. 

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