Books awaiting donation to local schools
There is a developing need in the local community of Alajuela to increase literacy and reading skills among the local children to help ensure that they get a fair start to their education. Thus the owners of Hotel La Rosa de America have decided to ask the large volume of tourists visiting the Hotel near the airport to reserve a bit of space in their luggage for some books that they no longer need.
Commencing last May, Hotel La Rosa de America began a program to encourage guests to help contribute in a positive way to the country they would be traveling to as tourists.
Simply donating money was not seen as a viable solution for the Hotel to be asking of it's guests. Therefore, hotel owner Robert Hick decided to ask all guests who were reserving rooms at his hotel via the Internet to consider donating books suitable for local schools.
The response has been excellent. Approximately one of every ten guests bring at least one to five books with them. Many also bring basic school supplies such as paper, pens, pencils etc... To visit the website of this program and see the current statistics and pictures please go to this link: http://www.larosadeamerica.com/
The majority of books collected to date are English children's books. The program also accepts Spanish and French books of all levels. The books are then collected and sorted at the hotel and when the target number is reached, representatives from the local schools are contacted. For a school to be considered as suitable for donations three conditions must be met. First, the school must be a public school and not in receipt of private funds. Second, the school must have a demonstrated need for the books to be donated. For example, to receive English books, the school must have a functioning English program. Finally, the school must have the ability and desire to maintain the books in an acceptable fashion to ensure that the maximum number of students can benefit from their use.
So far the program has donated to 2 schools, one an elementary school and the other a Grade 1-12 school. Both are located within five kms of the hotel and all donations were warmly received. Specific requests from the schools were for maps, and learning DVDs - both of which were almost non-existent in each school.
All donations to this program are gratefully accepted and the owners and staff at Hotel La Rosa de America have committed to ensuring that all donations will be used to their best possible effectiveness. If you are planning to travel to Costa Rica in the future and would like to drop by and contribute to our donation program, please visit our website at: http://www.larosadeamerica.com/
