Biblioteca awards scholarships
By Luisa Velte

For several Saturday mornings in June and July, hopeful candidates for scholarships flocked to the library to fill out applications and sit for interviews. On Tuesday, August 21, the list of 225 scholarship winners were posted in the patio.

Of these 225 students, 121 are attending middle school or high school. They live in rural communities surrounding San Miguel, where the cost of education beyond primary school can burden families, especially when bus travel is necessary. Each of these students will receive a beca of 1,000 pesos, not enough to pay for a year of schooling, but a help, as well as a source of pride, and a coveted recognition for a good academic record.

For many of those who were just entering middle school, the interview was a new experience. Once they relaxed they had a lot to tell us about their communities and their schools. The older students frequently expressed their anxieties about continuing their education beyond high school. We listened to all of them. We will remember the bright youngster who wants to study to be a veterinarian when he graduates in two years.

The remaining 104 scholarship awards, 6,000 pesos each, will go to university students who will be attending 22 different universities and pursuing a variety of majors including architecture, clinical psychology, tourism, business administration, medicine, biochemistry, engineering, computer programming, obstetrical nursing, pharmacology, agronomy, dental surgery, law and accounting.

Interviews with these university-bound students were often lengthy and detailed. Each student had a different set of challenges to resolve. Tuition costs vary greatly; government-sponsored universities are almost free of charge, but most of our applicants are attending universities that cost between 3,000 and 20,000 pesos annually. We marveled at how they managed to live on so little at out-of-town universities and how, even when holding down jobs, they could earn top grades.

So many well-qualified applicants appeared this year that we wanted to grant 16 more university scholarships than last year. Such a large increase looked barely possible, even after a year of very generous support from the library, the Bodega de Sorpresas, and friends in the community. At the last minute, as we were tallying the figures and feeling slightly apprehensive, we received two fine gifts—one from the Michael Wein Foundation and another from the Princeton Day School in Princeton, New Jersey. That was when we knew that there would be 16 more.

Thank you, good friends, for extending help to 225 of San Miguel’s students.

The Public Library finishes summer courses
By Jesús Ibarra

The Biblioteca Publica (Public Library) finished its first calendar of summer workshops for children which lasted from July 9 to July 17. “This is the first time the Public Library has organized this kind of courses. Other years, the summer courses in the library, in a program called ‘My vacations in the library,’ were organized by the National Net of Libraries but for the first time this year, we organized our own workshops,” said Rosario Muñoz, assistant librarian.

“However, ‘My vacations in the library’ courses, consisting only of reading workshops complimented with manual activities, were offered at the same time as the Library workshops, but in the afternoons.”

Muñoz explained that the Library workshops included reading workshops, chorus, painting, theater, ecology, pre-Hispanic music, and digital photography. All the teachers were volunteers and specialists in their area. “All the children participated in the different workshops in order to have a variety of activities”, said Muñoz.

Last Friday, August 17 at 11am, the closing ceremony took place. The presenters, Axel Chacón and Sandra Yáñez, were two of the 53 children, from 6 to 14 years old, who participated in the courses, which were totally free for children. The children’s chorus, directed by Patricia Espinosa, performed three different songs accompanied by Liliana Gutiérrez at the piano. Miguel Kegel, the Library general manager, announced that the library has a project of forming a local chorus with children, which would be directed by Javier Hernández “This chorus will be the chorus of San Miguel, the local government is supporting us in this project, as well as St Paul’s Church” said Kegel, who added that the Public Library is a very important cultural community center in the city, which for the first time is working along with the local government.

Hernández, who studied music in Mexico City and is a tenor, said that any kid who wants to belong to the chorus will be accepted. “Each kid has a different ability for singing so we will begin with a preliminary chorus with all children, and where they will be taught to sing and general acknowledgements about music. From this group, we will select the one who have more abilities for singing and we will form the official chorus, which will be at important presentations. However, all the kids will have the opportunity to be in a chorus,” said Javier, who added that kids from 8 to 16 years will be accepted. “To accept smaller children will be difficult,” he said.

Other performances by the summer courses students were four different theater plays, form the theater workshop, directed by José Luis Mendoza and Jane Casa. These plays were based on several San Miguel legends.

Children in the summer workshops did two different bibliographic investigations about San Miguel called: “San Miguel de Allende, Cultural Heritage” and “Proud to be sanmiguelense”. As a conclusion of this work, one of the kids, Axel Chacón, said that, “Heritage is something you can inherit from generation to generation. If we take care of it, we can enjoy it for a longer time. On the other hand, it would be finished very quickly and we could not enjoy it anymore.”

All the artwork done by the children will be on exhibition at the Public Library through the rest of the month.