In times like these in which some politicians seem to be convinced that kicking businessmen and blaming them for all the evils is profitable, suddenly there is news that makes it worth stopping along the way to emphasize that businessmen of this country not only do we have to thank them for what they always do – creating jobs, guaranteeing income for hundreds of thousands of families and paying taxes so that the State functions – but they also deserve, from time to time, that, as we now do, stand and applaud for the 20 years of one of the most beautiful works of social responsibility in Antioquia.
We are talking about the Secretos para Contar Foundation, a program that has done as much or more than the Ministry of Education or the Secretariat to promote reading and especially reading comprehension among families who live in what is called dispersed rurality in Antioquia. .
What “Secrets” has done could well be classified as an epic. Like those that the pioneers of the Antiochian colonization used to undertake, this time, the great epic of books and reading. During these 20 years they have traveled the department, inch by inch, to bring to each of the families in each and every one of the 4,200 villages of the department the gift and magic of knowledge.
And they have not done it just once, since 2004, Secretos para Contar has traveled the entire surface of Antioquia nine times to deliver their package of books into their own hands to each family and in this way they have helped 210,000 peasant families to build their own library with 27 titles that cover topics from practical use such as medicinal plants, agricultural tips or a guide to health, through ideas on how to resolve conflicts, to stories and stories about the earth.
The logistics are monumental: the young reading facilitators spend two years visiting the 4,200 schools (there is one per village), to one of them, in Urrao, it takes them three days to arrive from when they leave the town. Every year and a half, they begin a new round and take, school by school, the three new books they publish, and deliver them to each family. The “Secrets” books have become so beloved and so famous in deep Antioch that even those who do not have children in school go to the delivery event and beg because they do not want their collection to be ‘decompleted’.
They have measured the impact in these 20 years. They calculate that the reading habit increased from 24% to 78% between daily and weekly and the reception is such that when they ask the peasants of Antioquia which books they remember most, 19 from the Secretos para Contar collection appear. among the top 25: ‘From the field to the table’, ‘With the hair on end’ and ‘The secrets of the garden’ compete for the first places with the Bible and with Nacho lee.
It is not the book for the book’s sake. They are made by the best experts in each subject. The illustrations are commissioned from dedicated designers. The paper and typography are of high quality. Before distributing them, they offer workshops to the 12,000 rural teachers to guide them on what the best use of the texts would be. With them they send each family a stamped invitation to attend the book delivery party in their neighborhood. There they call for reading promotions, in which they gather on the grass, in the middle of the silence of the mountain, to read aloud and talk about what they have read. Not even those at the Hay Festival would have imagined 4,200 stages as spectacular as these to celebrate books and words.
They also distribute glasses for those who have difficulty reading up close, dictionaries so they don’t get lost in strange words, and they also play barter for seeds between the paths. In every sense, a beauty of a program.
The teacher from a school in Ituango explained it better to EL COLOMBIANO: “The scene that seems most beautiful to me is the one of the peasant who, after the meetings, gets on his mule with a book under his arm. There he carries his passport, because the books show him that the planet is not just the place where they live. Reading makes them inhabitants of the world, it has helped the countryside to know that we are not alone.”
Precisely in these extreme places to which Gustavo Petro insists in his speeches that he wants to bring a doctor, the Secretos para Contar Foundation arrived in Antioquia some time ago, supported by businessmen, to bring knowledge, affection, opportunities, magic, in a library .
