After 6 months I say goodbye to AIDA.
AIDA is a solidarity bookstore, an NGO, which «works in development cooperation and humanitarian aid projects in developing countries in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America».
During these last months, every Thursday from 17:00 to 20:00 I have been volunteering in one of their offices in Valencia. Being the book lover that I am, I have enjoyed this volunteer task twice as much as anyone else. Although it is true that at first it was hard for me to join the team (it was my first long term volunteering), I was soon made to feel at home and looked forward every week to being surrounded by books again.
Like any librarian my role has been to prepare the store to receive customers, to be behind the cash register and do some bookkeeping, to design posters with promotions and offers, to decorate the store on special dates… but without a doubt my favorite task (and the least desired by the rest of my colleagues) was to get into the warehouse where all the books that do not fit in the two stores that the bookstore has are stored and organize them. Yes, I know how it sounds, but to be completely honest, there was no better satisfaction than, after several hours of getting my hands full of dust and carrying more books than I should have up stairs as unstable as they were wide, to see the shelves organized by publisher, color, language and genre.
While it was certainly an exhaustive task, it mattered little when the following week I received thank you notes from other colleagues about how easy it had been to find this or that book.
So I admit, sometimes I spend more time than I should organizing the space I work in, but that only results in a clean and structured environment, so I have no complaints. If you need someone to help you with moving or do a Marie Kondo style clean out, you know who to contact.
As much fun as I’ve been having all these Thursdays, I’ve decided that I need to focus my energy on studies and other projects that right now need that little push to get ahead. So, today I am leaving this side of the counter, but I have no doubt that I will be here buying more books than I can read very soon.
If you are interested in AIDA’s project, you can visit their website here, and become part of their volunteer corps or donate those books that are collecting dust on the shelf.