I'm always delighted to share my passion for reading with children and young adults on my school visits during the Book Week on Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire.

My focus lies on how we approach books, story characters, themes and topics. I i think it is important to find out what parts of the story has had an effect on them and why. This often leads to interesting discussions on social matters, the people’s personal experiences and challenges. It is rewarding to witness how during these encounters a transformation takes place; a book moves from being a story container to a source of personal identification.

 

By giving workshops on the promotion of reading to different groups and organizations I get the chance to share my experience and knowledge on this subject. 

 

Workshops on writing fiction and poetry are an excellent platform to do this. I consider it important to focus on how important it is to share emotions and thoughts on paper, but that publishing demands more than just "having a story". It entails being open to feedback, criticism, to delete if necessary and sometimes to go back to the drawing table. Not an easy, but a very necessary process. Your story is yours, but you write for others to read, which brings with it a certain degree of responsibility to do it well. 
 

This has been my personal motivation and reason why I am determined to keep diversifying and developing as a writer.

 

Over the years I have had the privilege of sharing my experiences during various events:

 

• Participant Children's Book Week in Aruba from 2007 to 2009

• Participant Wan Tru Puwema, Linguistics and plurilingualism congress in Surinam in 2010

• Workshop "Reading Promotion" for the foundation Biblioteca Korsou from  2010  to 2012

• Course "The Magic of Storytelling Techniques"  for After School Care Aruba in 2012

• Speaker at the congress The Caribbean, The Land and The People, of the Association of "Caribbean Woman Writers and Scholars“ in Surinam in 2012

• Workshop "Reading gives pleasure" for the Instituto Pedagogico Arubano and primary education in 2015

• Workshop  "Guidance and Support" for the launch of the Reading Promotion Project of ‘Fundacion Lesa ta Dushi’, Bonaire in 2015

• Participant Book Festival in Curaçao in 2017

• Participant Book Festival in Bonaire in 2018

• Participant Children's Book Festival Aruba 2023