We’ve started the 5th edition of the project Purchena Welcoming Library, a social library project with immigrant minors and others at risk of exclusion

Welcoming Library is a project developed by the Municipal Public Library of Purchena (Andalusia) with the collaboration of Purchena Youth Info Office and the participation of European volunteers of the Erasmus+ program that has won the prize “Public Library and Social Commitment 2017”.

In Purchena, Andalusian small town inland of the province of Almería, there are three minor centers that host young people at serious risk of exclusion and immigrants from different countries, respectively. The Public Library, wanting to become a meeting place for these young people with local youngsters, promotes the “Welcoming Library” project since September 2015 in collaboration with several cultural and social associations and young European volunteers of the Erasmus+ program of the EU.

Those young immigrants and others at risk of exclusion began to go to the library in a first moment to look for information and to connect to internet and, in a few cases, to borrow books. The staff of the library understood that the public library of Purchena could be a magnificent meeting point between those young people and local youngsters.

From that moment, it has developed a great number of cultural activities, reading clubs and, especially, Spanish, French, German and English classes taught by local volunteers and European volunteers of the aforementioned Erasmus + program.

You can what a video with English subtitle about the project following this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zLSzIlQius