Since its beginnings, the Curt Thomas Sheck Foundation has focused on education. In the early years, support included both scholarships at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and donations of books, school supplies, sports equipment, building materials and cash to small rural primary schools in Costa Rica, Central America. In addition, environmental education materials were purchased for schools in the southern Nicoya Peninsula in conjunction with the private Curú Wildlife Refuge.

 

A library for Guayabo

 

In 2004, the long-held vision of a library for Colonia de Guayabo, the first rural community the foundation connected with in 1984, took wings and is now the foundation’s principal thrust. Putting resources into a rural community such as Guayabo is paramount since the people have limited economic ability to improve educational opportunities for their children. 

 

The Curt Thomas Sheck Community Library (Biblioteca Comunal Curt Thomas Sheck) is a joint effort of the foundation with the Colonia de Guayabo Development Association and the community at large. 

 

As plans progressed, the vision  broadened to include a distance-learning component that offers online learning to young people and adults. It opens the door to university classes and adult education programs, supporting  the people of Guayabo as they seek to expand their opportunities and privide a better quality of life for themselves and their families.

 

In addition to the books in the lending library and the Internet and computers, a palette of learning activities and the library's photocopier--the only one in town--draws young and old to fill their personal, educational and bureaucratic needs for copies, a valuable service to the community.

 

Partnering with Costa Rica Foundation

 

The Foundation for Education and Progress in Guayabo (FeProGuayabo) was established as a Costa Rican Foundation, with the support of the Curt Thomas Sheck Foundation, specifically to operate the Curt Thomas Sheck Community Library. Under an agreement with the Development Association of Colonia de Guayabo, which owns the land where the building is located, FeProGuayabo administers the library. It grew out of an initial committee of dedicated community volunteers who joined together to work with the Curt Thomas Sheck Foundation during the construction process. It was seen as important to have an entity whose primary focus was to operate and oversee the library. Our foundation continues to provide important support to the library as FeProGuayabo carries out the considerable challenge of providing services and programs in this rural community.

 

We invite you to take a look at how the library has grown and at ongoing activities by visiting our photo gallery.

 

Rooted in tradition. Focused on a better future.

 

The library's octagonal shape honors the architecture that once existed in nearby Guayabo National Monument, Costa Rica’s only archaeological park. The indigenous people lived in the area from about 2000 BC to AD 1400. The library's conical roof shelters a multiuse central area, bookshelves and computer workstations. In front of the building is a stone calzada (or walkway) such as found in the indigenous culture.

 

Though archaeologists and anthropologists are still discovering how this ancient culture lived, some say peoples from Central and South America and even cultures from what is now Mexico, the United States and Canada made their way to Guayabo to learn, an early "library" of knowledge and experience. One of the long-range goals of the community library is to gather, protect and share existing research on the culture that flourished here. In 2009, Guayabo National Monument was designated as a World Engineering Heritage Site for its system of aqueducts and stone roads by the American Society of Civil Engineers in the United States  

 

The Curt Thomas Sheck Community Libary is located in the heart of the village established here in the 20th century. The small stream that flows  alongside, lined by guava trees (called guayabos in Spanish, source of the town’s name) and other trees and flowering plants has it source in-the protected forest of the national monument. Nearby are the community building, the school, the Catholic church  and the soccer field. It sits on sacred land, as does the entire village. Pottery shards discovered while digging the foundation for the building were classified by an archaeologist and turned over to the National Museum. Visitors never fail to comment on the special energy they feel inside the library.