At Centro T.S. Borges, our mission begins at home — in the northern zone of La Paz, Bolivia — where we work to offer young people from under-resourced backgrounds a rare opportunity: to slow down, to read deeply, and to find meaning in a world that often rewards distraction over reflection.

In an age shaped by artificial intelligence, where attention spans are fragmented and our focus often lasts only the length of a TikTok, many young people are losing the ability — and the space — to engage with literature on its own terms. As T.S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets:

“Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.”

That’s exactly what we aim to resist.

Our free workshops, led by international interns and volunteers, are designed to help students rediscover the power of reading — not as a chore, but as a door. A door to ideas, to dreams, to voices from other centuries and countries. To understand that behind a single sentence lies a world. That a story, when read with care, can reveal more than algorithms ever will.

We believe that cultivating this kind of attention — the kind required to truly read, to think, to imagine — is a radical act. And one that the next generation in Bolivia deserves just as much as anyone else.