Please Help Us Purchase a Truck for Our Honduras Libraries!
Riecken Community Libraries operates 65 libraries in Honduras and Guatemala that are free and open to all people of all ages. The libraries are located in some of the poorest regions of Honduras and serve nearly 300,000 visitors annually – over half of whom are women and girls – and provide life-changing access to information through books, training and programs that are relevant to each community.
Many of our libraries are in villages that can only be reached on roads just like you saw in our video – extremely rough, mountainous and often flooded. Without a truck to transport people, books and materials, our libraries cannot operate.
Video of a typical road to a Riecken Community LIbrary!
Unique to Riecken Community Libraries – and critical to their success – is the Riecken Community Library Model in which the libraries belong to their communities and are managed by a group of citizen volunteers which are subsidized by local governments.
Mate (Mah-tay), named after “Mater” in the movie Cars has been our faithful Mitsubishi truck – abused regularly by harsh driving conditions. But the truck has finally breathed its last breath after being driven all over the back roads of Honduras, well over 200,000 miles – to bring staff to do trainings, deliver books and computers, and other materials needed in the villages.
We Do We Need Your Help on GoFundMe?
Grants and partner donations support most of Riecken Community Library programs, volunteers and staff run the libraries on a day to day basis, and municipalities provide support for facilities. But there is no funding available for transportation. Institutional and corporate donors are reluctant to provide funding or sponsorship of vehicles, despite the critical role that they play in field-based efforts.
We need to meet our goal as soon as possible so that we can get to the libraries with much needed materials and staff and continue to do our work. It’s work that changes lives but we need to get there in order to do it!
How You Can Help…
1. Please Donate on our GoFundMe page. Your contribution of any size will help in this urgent effort.
2. And please share on Facebook.
You can follow us on Facebook to be updated on the progress of this campaign.
On behalf of so many people – young and old – who are empowered by our libraries to build better futures, the Riecken Community Libraries Team thanks you from the bottom of our hearts!
We Thank You for Your Generosity!
