About Me

My name is Gaia Stiglich. I am 17 years old and I live in London, England.

 

Having done charity work for over two years by teaching English to Peruvian children from low income families online, I wanted to teach in person and I found a foundation called Niños del Arco Iris located in Cusco, Peru and visited it in July 2022. Over the course of the 10 day period when I was there, I taught 3rd grade children English using several methods. One of these methods was by reading English picture books to the class outloud. However, I did not only work in the classroom. I worked in the administrative sector as well as the library where I organized the book collection. One day I found a bilingual picture book with Quechua, the native language, and Spanish text but there were no books in English and Spanish. This immediately inspired me to write a book for charity in order to support the learning of English with Children’s Literature and help the children practice their fluency in their own language as well as the one they learn at school simultaneously. After writing the text for the first book I realized that I wanted to write another with a completely different plot in order to be able to make the themes of the books appealing to most children. My aim is to gift and distribute my books across charities in Latin America and other Spanish speaking communities in different countries.

 

Through this journey, I have not only discovered my love for writing stories with a meaning as I have also learnt what the impact of service is on different communities to my own and how important the interplay between the representation of images and text is. In the future, I plan to continue writing books so stay tuned!

 

I am endlessly grateful for all of the volunteers listed below who have helped me throughout my journey as a young author.  Their help has taught me about selfless service and how helping others can make a real difference.

 

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