The Story of a True Hero
"Nanay" Gavina Castro from the Philippines, lives in a small town in Lomboy Dagupan-Pangasinan, and works in a Community Library, who is trying to maintain her small workplace which she calls the Barangay's Library of Information.
The small town of Lomboy Dagupan-Pangasinan, Philippines.
The displayed books are donations that came from the Main City Public Library, which most of it looks really old and might not be enough to cater the needs of the people in the community but for a supermom like Nanay Gavina, everything will be just fine. She never stops on planning how to improve her collections and manages to open the library for visitors especially the young children of Lomboy even during summer vacation.
The summer weather in the Philippines is actually the best time for the kids to enjoy, where most of young children play out in the sun, help their moms with the house chores and their fathers in the farm or in the sea to catch some fish which they can sell to the market. It's also the best time for Nanay Gavina to open the library to welcome anyone who loves to read, enjoy the peacefulness and learn new things.
The True Story of Sacrifice and Dedication
The struggle is real for Nanay Gavina, and one of the difficulties she's facing in order to get the new books that the children might need will be coming from the Main City of Dagupan which will take 2-3 hours of travel by boat. Apparently, most of visitors of the Library do not how to read. It gets even harder that some of the kids in Lomboy doesn't understand the Philippines main language which is Talalog/Filipino, unfortunately, most of these books are written either Tagalog or in English. These sacrifices are nothing but a piece of cake according to Nanay Gavina. Not only that she serves as the community librarian but she also becomes the teacher for these kids. She helps them by translating the words into their dialect so her library customers can deeply understand what's story of the book is all about and most of the time she teaches these children on how to do their homeworks from School.
Nanay Gavina earns less than $60 (US Dollars) or exactly Php2,600 (Philippine Peso) per month which she never complained about. She's already happy teaching her own kids inside the library and becomes the second mother of other children who visits her.
She remembers when she was still young , she always have the time visiting the School library and read. She's the person that gives importance to the things that she learned by reading and these traits she wanted her children to have.
Nanay Gavina wants her library fix, so that she can accommodate more people and make them realize that there is a place where they can feel the importance of learning and having a good education in life.
True Heroes are Public Servant,
They save lives, they give hope,
They are inspirations, they create dreams,
They don't ask anything big in return,
They sacrifice too much for others.
and sometimes normal people like us do not recognize these sacrifices made.
credits:
ABS-CBN NEWS
