FOUNDATION PEDRO MILESI AND POPULAR LIBRARY OF BELLA VISTA

What unites us is our determination to fight in order to change the grim political and social reality that strikes our country. We are motivated by the desire to share and support the initiatives of the excluded and dominated groups that act in defense of their legitimate interests, and endeavor to overcome the inequities of the current economic system and its political model. Accordingly, commitment represents the pivot around which our action revolves and the most genuine tool at our disposal to advance in the organizational tasks of the Pedro Milesi Foundation and Popular Library of Bella Vista, perfecting, as much as possible, the work undertaken since 1990, in complete autonomy from the established governmental powers. We seek to promote values for the development of rules of conduct that nurture an independent and critical thinking about civic matters, through collective creation and the appropriation of knowledge.

OUR HISTORY

The Popular Library of Bella Vista, was created by the Pedro Milesi Foundation with the purpose of paying concrete tribute to the anonymous founders of Social Training Centers in the “Pampa gringa” (the zones of the pampas mostly populated by Italian immigrants), and of the Popular Libraries in towns and cities, so as to reestablish practices of social work that from the early xxth century to the Forties, were habitual among the popular strata of the society.
Pedro Milesi (92) died in Buenos Aires in the winter of 1981. In March of 1976, he fled from the city of Cordova (Argentina) leaving behind his home, as he was alerted of danger by the kidnapping and the disappearance of many of his friends abducted by the military who had seized power in Argentina at that time. Others gave him asylum and took care of him in different places of the country until his death. Just a short time later, some of those friends decided to create a Library as a tribute to his career and as an expression of their commitment: to spreading knowledge specially "among those who lack the material means and the necessary cultural stimuli to approach it”.

From 1982 to 1988, personal donations were received from students, workers and professionals who had known him or shared the intention to develop a Library. On the 28th of November of 1988 the incorporation act of the Foundation that takes his name was formally registered.

In 1989 the Pedro Milesi Foundation acquires a building at the corner of Rufino Zado and Jose de Iriarte, in the District of Bella Vista, fifteen blocks to the south of the Palace of Justice, in the city of Cordova (Argentina). We opened our doors under the initial proposal of creating a reading room for adults, where the latter could also find a place in which they had the opportunity to exchange opinions as well as reflect and discuss about their problems, in a district with 1800 families of low and very low income, populated by craftsmen, industrial workers, small retailers and some civil servants. But, as time went on, tens of children in the neighborhood started demanding attention, asking for children’s activities and they ended up virtually taking control of that space. The Library became formally inaugurated on the 4th of June of 1990. We began with 400 volumes, in a small reading room with just an area of fifty roofed square meters, and a staff made up only of a librarian and a teacher.The architects, B. Elkin, A. Falú and M. Curutchet, designed a project for the development of the building of the seat, and with a new collection of funds the reading room was remodelled. This work was largely made possible thanks to the voluntary cooperation of close friends and neighbors who shared our objectives and proposals. In 1991 the Swedish International Development Authority, granted our Foundation, through Birkagarden-Latin, a donation to be awarded in three annual installments, to enable us to finish the seat building project, to acquire a photocopier and cover some additional expenses in equipment and furniture, as well as a monthly scholarship of one hundred fifty dollars to remunerate the work of a coordinator. When the project ended, on the 30th of June of 1994, the seat building counted on halls and rooms with an area of almost 400 roofed square meters. At the present time, the Pedro Milesi Foundation and Popular Library of Bella Vista, owns four buildings and has been given the use of another one on a free basis. It also supports over twenty cultural workshops, with a staff of about half hundred people, including both scholarship beneficiaries and volunteers.

THE MISSION

Our reason of being

To promote values and forms of behavior that help people to develop independent critical thinking concerning civic matters and raise their social and political consciousness. And to facilitate, to those who lack material means or cultural stimuli, the appropriation of knowledge, that constitutes a common heritage, product of the development of humankind.

THE OBJECTIVES

- To head together toward the development of knowledge by helping to place it within reach of all through the stimulus to reading and the use of graphic, audiovisual and electronic means.
- To join forces in the task of facilitating ordinary people’s access to science, technical knowledge, and the arts, which must be regarded as part of the common cultural heritage of mankind resulting from the shared efforts of all human beings, spreading this heritage especially among those who lack the material means and the cultural stimuli to approach it.
- To commit ourselves to facing the challenge of shaping an autonomous and critical consciousness among people that enable them, regardless of age, sex, social class, and beliefs, to search, select, and process the information they get from their social environment.


THE VISION

Our activities are aimed at stimulating the development of personal aptitudes, putting forward the use of tools which make it easier both for children and adults the process of learning from the knowledge accumulated by humankind.
A shared view that rests on the use of printed texts as well as plastic, audio-visual and cinematograpy images, and seeks to:

- Stimulate processes of conceptualization.

- Use reading as a source of pleasure and a way of access to the sciences and the arts.

- Practice the art of music, writing, and narration as means of expression and communication and as an instrument for individual and group creation.

- Take advantage of the habits generated by people’s early and intense exposure to TV language and messages in order to stimulate their critical thinking by urging them to overcome their habit of behaving as merely passive viewers.


THE INSTITUTIONAL PROJECT

We have maintained the Library Service as the central pillar of our project, and reading as an exemplary tool for human development and cultural enrichment. In the years that have elapsed since our beginnings, as the Library became part of the neighborhood and its inhabitants –children,younsgters, and adults joined the Library’s activities—our social role changed: From merely responding to people’s demands we have now shifted to the role of active promoters of new initiatives for the community’s development.


Our aspiration is to be a "COMMUNITY OF LEARNING" characterized by:

- The centrality of reading.
- Activities aimed at cultural, psico-physical, social and civic development
- Combination of disciplines
- Space for people’s expression of all ages and both sexes
- Participation of the neighbors.
- Integration of voluntary work and paid work (scholarship beneficiaries).
- Investigation, teaching, intervention
- Links with schools (primary and secondary), the Municipal Center of Health (clinic), the Provincial Hospital, with other Popular Libraries, the Board of Work for Human Rights, among others.

Pivotal Areas of Action

- To give priority to preventive actions because of our awareness of the fact that in our district we face very serious problems of health, nutrition, abuse, violence, addictions, crimes against people and property, and that is necessary to provoke reactions that move people to take action to protect themselves and empower the community to take charge also of functions related to the indemnization and defense of the weakest.

- To contribute to the crystallization of specific answers and activities with intergenerational participation, reassessing the role of the third age, not merely in a formal sense, but as effective agents in the reconstruction of social history and the transmmission of abilities and knowledge.

- To organize in a more systematic way the inclusion of group reading, specially of narrative, poetry and history, as a constituent element of all our activities.

- To systematize the evolution of the learning processes, and to reflect on them so as to evaluate collectively –by group, area, age, and then at large--the methodologies applied and the results obtained in relation to the most global objectives.


THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

The Board of Directors:
Our Board of Directors is made up of its President, Susana Fiorito, the Vice-president, Andrés Rivera, the Treasurer, Carlos José Masera, and the Secretary, Carlos Alberto Gazzera. These officials are responsible for defining and approving the policies and strategies for running our Organization, increasing and optimizing its possibilities and resources to fulfill its ultimate goal.

The Technical Advisory Team:
It gives technical advice to the members of the various services and workshops offered by the Foundation. It plans, together with the Board of Directors, the yearly activities and evaluates the projects of every workshop.

The Information Service
It prepares and disseminates messages related to institutional information on our Organization, adressed both to the public and our own staff.

Pedro Milesi Foundation’s Secretary and Administrative Office:
It administers the material, human, and financial resources needed to implement the diverse activities carried out by our Foundation.

The Secretary of the Popular Library of Bella Vista
This official checks the workshops’ teaching staff attendance to work, coordinates the allocation of the available classrooms, facilities, and equipment as well as the timetables for the scheduled activities, provides the various workshops with all the printed information they need to work, and offers information as this is requested by the neighboors, other organizations, and people interested in the activities and workings of our Foundation.

The Coordinators
Each working team is coordinated by a member of some workshop’s teaching staff, usually the most experienced one. The Coordinator is reponsible for the fulfillment of the annual project of the workshops of his or her team, as well as for compliance with the institutional norms and assignments, by overseeing the team’s performance and following up its accomplishments. Coordinators are also responsible for briefing their team’s members on institutional issues and informing the Library’s Director about the activities of the workshops that their team has charge of. The weekly Meeting of Coordinators, at which all working teams’ Coordinators must be present, functions as a merely advisory body, without power to approve resoultions.

Working Teams:
The function of these teams is to carry out the activities of their various workshops so as to achieve their goals. Working teams are made up of the workshops’ teaching staff, both grantees of scholarships and volunteers who are in charge of specific activities in our Organization.


OUR PRESENT

Our Foundation counts on a variety of recreational and cultural activities that allow us to offer a diversity of options to the people of the neighborhood of Bella Vista and its bordering districts. We distinguish four areas of action:

Cultural development:
Within this area we may enjoy activities such as musical expression, dances, plastic arts, theater, and murga, that is, groups of street musicians who play popular music while dancing. As the chief pivot on which our Foundation’s activities revolve, we offer a Library’s Service that has at its diposal several thousand books on different subjects as well as a collection of videos. All this is complemented by activitities aimed at Fostering Reading, Travelling Book Valises, and Guided Visits. In addition, the small reading room Magical World welcomes the youngest children (3 to 12 years old) for individual and group reading, storytelling, the practice of writing, and recreational activities related to reading.

Social development: It refers to the training for work imparted by the workshops’ teaching staff hoping for growth of collective work as we can witness in students’ work at our organic vegetable garden and in our computer education workshop, or individual labor as in the workshops of Knitting and Sewing.

Psychophysical Development: In this area we seek to foster the habit of cultivating physical fitness in our participants through activities like different sport games, folkloric dances, murga, physical education for children, initiation into sports, conscious gymnastics, life in nature, the summer school, etc.

Civic Development: In this area diverse activities are fulfilled that relate to the Human rights—both individual and social—and the promotion of civic consciousness and organizations.

2007: THE YEAR OF THE COMMUNITARIAN THEATER
For the current year the chief project of our Foundation is to join the different activities and expression workshops within the framework of a Communitarian Theater. The project aims to carry out social-artistic activities in the public spaces of the district of Bella Vista. In this way, we seek to integrate our different activities through techniques serving to foster social solidarity, with the objective of promoting the organization of the community by activating joint work in order to “take the Library to the streets”.

The Communitarian Theater seeks to become a deep social event for our community.

The Financing
Since knowledge is a collective creation of humakind that belongs to all, it is not considered legitimate to compel people to pay for having access to it; the Foundation is no the owner but just an instrument for making knowledge become again a common possession. The Library does not charge fees for attendance to or paticipation in any of its courses and workshops, nor for enjoying its services at its reading room; only the borrowing of books for taking them at home requires a monthly payment of a small sum that is the equivalent of the usual cost of a local newspaper Sunday edition.

Organizations that have supported and support our institutional activities:

- Fondo Nacional de las Artes
- ASDI, Autoridad Sueca para el Desarrollo Internacional (Swedish Authority for the International Development)
- UNICEF Argentina
- Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Lund, Suecia (Center of Latin American Studies, Lund, Sweden)
- Fundación Juan Minetti
- Fundación Arcor
- Fundación Antorchas
- Fundación Avina
- WK Kellogg Foundation
- Fundación Telefónica de Argentina
- The Embassy of the Netherlands (in Argentina)
- The Embassy of Canada (in Argentina)
- Servei de Biblioteques de la Diputació de Barcelona
- Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona
- International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)