February starts a new school year in Honduras, and we are excited for this "Next Chapter" for making 10 new libraries in 2019.  We continue reaching out to partner with organizations who often know a particular community in need and can strengthen the local relationship.  We've also started to work with a couple local Rotary Clubs who have reached out to us to serve particular schools. 

Rotary works on an international partnership basis as well, and we've loved getting to know people from across the globe who come together to serve.  Because as we all know, BOOKS CHANGE THE STORY.

The Honduran school year runs February through November.  It's great for getting a long Christmas break, enjoying the cool and dry mountain weather, and it's coffee picking time!  Many of our students help pick coffee to support their families, and coffee is Honduras' second biggest export after bananas.

As they work hard this season, we at Chispa Project are also working hard to help them get the educational resources they need to be successful in the 2019 school year.  Whether it's discovering a new way to develop organic coffee, or engineer a new water treatment plant, books help our students be more creative and develop critical thinking skills. 

This past year has been incredibly successful, and I'm so grateful for all your continued support.  We've completed 8 new libraries and reached 3,000 kids, all thanks to you.  Our 2019 goals reach even further:

• 10 new libraries
• 5,000 more students
• 100 more teachers
• An additional Honduran job opportunity
• Going from 2 wheels to 4 (we've got to upgrade from the motorcyle)
• And, our biggest library to date with 1,100 books!

Honduras has been in the news a lot recently between caravan immigration and unaccompanied minors at the border.  For many, life in Honduras is incredibly difficult, which makes sustainable change and your help so urgent today.

We know that books help change the story for Honduran kids by making a grassroots difference within local communities.  This is the first time our students have ever had access to children's books and that's all thanks to you.

This Giving Tuesday be part of the change.  $25 sponsors a child to get a library.   How many kids can you directly help today?  Donate online at chispaproject.org/nextchapter to give the gift of reading.

The answer? ​Each one is a tool that librarians can use to make information resources more accessible for the populations they serve. At its heart, a librarian's position is truly one of service, connecting readers and library users to the information they need to be successful. Whether success means translating a text to brail or to an auditory format, showing readers an app that can help them access the information that they need, or helping a reader to recognize valid sources of information, all are aspects of literacy and knowledge building. 

Over the three-day conference, attendees learned about automating their library inventories, about different activities to engage the readers’ interests, about how Instagram can help connect with readers, about appropriate times to photocopy texts, how to create short user-friendly videos and so much more. But more so than anything else the conference was a reminder that until information is applied, it is data and nothing more. The job of the librarian is to facilitate readers in identifying, evaluating, and applying the information that they encounter so that it becomes knowledge and practice. 

The Asociacion de Bibliotecarios y Documentalistas de Honduras (ABIDH) is a group of indvidiuals who see themselves as the gatekeepers to knowledge and learning for their country. They are confronted this year with two enormous tasks: combining traditional library norms with the technology focused demands of incoming readers, making information resources available and accessible to all students in Honduras. These leaders of schools and communities feel very much up to the challenges at hand, as they joked frequently throughout the conference "[Librarians] learned the advantages of sharing resources and working as a team far before many other professions." Adelante, equipo, to a Honduras with more libraries and more learning for all!

Located just north of Lago de Yoga, Honduras’ largest lake, lies a town called Rio Lindo, where you can find Eagles Academy, a small bilingual school with big personality.

The Honduran school year usually runs from February until November, but many bilingual and private schools run from late August until June, similar to schools in the US. This Monday, Eagles Academy celebrated the first day of the 2018-2019 school year with the inauguration of their new library, now complete with murals, posters, and new books to add to the growing collection!
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​Normally, when we inaugurate a library, we ask for teacher and parent volunteers to help us run our seven different literacy based stations, but Eagles Academy chose to call upon a group of their 10th graders to take on the leadership role.

We know what you might be thinking. “You put high schoolers in charge?!” And you would be correct; we put a group of capable, imaginative, and hard working high schoolers in charge of showing their young counterparts just how much you can learn from a book.

When we asked some of our helpers to tell us about their dreams, we received so many different answers. From teachers to biologists to graphic designers. Each one with special talents to share with the primary schoolers. Thanks to their support, the library inauguration was a huge success!

Congratulations to all of the students, parents, teachers, and community members in Rio Lindo who put in the hard work to make the inauguration day a success. Now, time to get reading!

Located high in the mountains outside of Tegucigalpa, Colonia Mirador del Oriente is found on a rocky hilltop with a steep drop on both sides, a chilly wind breezing through the buildings, and stunning views of the valley below. Centro Básico Tim Hines (named after an American missionary) sits on top of the ridge, and opens its door every day to almost 500 students between 1st and 9th grade. On the day of their library inauguration, students had the opportunity to explore their new space, and their new books, for the first time. You would think that at 13 and 14, some of the 9th graders would be “too cool” to snuggle into the new reading corners with a good book, right? But at the end of this day, students, anywhere from the ages 6 to 13, were curled up on their brand-new cushions. They were completely absorbed in the stories in their hands. 

​Prof. Jackie, one of the administrators at CEB Tim Hines, is a force to be reckoned with; she and the other educators at Tim Hines are intensely proud of their school and of their new library. The walls of the school and library are filled with color, and now each classroom has its own reading corner. Chispa Project worked alongside the educators at Tim Hines over a months-long process to provide training for parents, school staff, and the students on how to take care of their new library space, and how to integrate literacy based learning into all aspects of teaching. The students and their families now have access to over 500 different titles, each an adventure waiting to be had! 

Interesting in sponsoring your own library? Contact us here. Interesting in joining us for your own short term volunteer project? Check out past projects and ideas here. 

Grandmother's house" may have been quite a trip in the popular children's song, but she's got nothing on this school in Santa Maria, La Paz.  The beautiful but steep road leads us from one mountain top to another, crossing a river in the bottom of the valley to the Jose Cecilio del Valle School, grades 1 - 6 with over 150 students.

This school was chosen by our co-sponsor Leifheit Campus, in Germany, where one of the German teachers, Diana Klein, had previously worked as a volunteer in this Honduras school.  Now, after months of planning, it's time to inaugurate this school with 650 new books of different titles!

After a school applies with Chispa, the school forms a committee of teachers and parents who then create the policies and layout of the library program.  This school decided they wanted a central library, and they worked with the parents to mount a division wall in a previous storage room. 
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We also decided to create reading corners in each classroom.  Every week students will go to the library and then borrow books to bring back to their classroom and share throughout the week. Parent and student volunteers helped paint the reading corners, and assembled bookshelves.

The inauguration is always a favorite part, where the students rotate through reading activity stations all day.  The students received a "passport" and then proceeded to each station to receive a stamp. Each station presents a different kind of book and a craft or activity.  Here, the students explored the virtual world of the night sky and Greek mythology, science experiments about static electricity, and even made their own snowflakes.

Congratulations to all the students, parents and teachers here in Honduras, but as well to all the teachers, students and parents in Germany who helped make this dream a reality for these students to have access to their school's first children's books!

Have you ever asked yourself how you, as an individual, can make a life-changing difference in the world? The question can be intimidating, especially since our culture promotes the heroic narrative of one single person making a world-changing impact.

It’s a question I ask myself as I ride along with volunteers from the Chispa Project, a charity my daughter founded in 2014 to start children’s libraries in Honduras.

Today, we head for Rancho Santa Fe, a 250-acre campus an hour out of Tegucigalpa. It’s one of several children’s homes maintained by NPH Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH), literally meaning “our little brothers and sisters.” Started by the Rev. William Wasson in 1954, the charity embraces Catholic values, but remains an unaffiliated private institution.

We bounce along dirt roads for about five minutes until we arrive at a group of buildings set on a hill. Each building contains four dormitories. There are about 260 boys and girls who make their home in this vast wooded oasis.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the children are not sad, starving orphans. They dance about our car while others stand aside and giggle incessantly. However, most give us a respectful distance as we unload.

We’ve come to deliver a 900-book library to this campus, possibly a life-changing thing. Yet first, Sara assigns me the most laborious task — using my laptop computer to enter every book title onto a spreadsheet.

My seemingly meaningless task leaves me feeling dwarfed in the shadow of NPH. The charity has made a huge difference all over Central and South America, caring for thousands of orphans and abandoned children. Chispa means “spark” in Spanish, but I feel more like a small speck than a spark.

I begin my task on an outside patio where a few kids stop for brief moments, leaning over the boxes, yearning to pull out a book. However, I wave them off, like a cook not finished with his creation.

Nevertheless, 12-year-old Maria persists, so I offer her a book I’ve already cataloged. She reads the entire book aloud in Spanish.  I offer her another. She does the same. I feel like I’m hand-feeding a famished man. Each time I pass Maria a book, she takes it with both hands. Her big, brown eyes pull me in like a tractor beam.

Inventory was not a task I wanted. I wanted to do something that would produce noticeable results. Perhaps like some of you, I tend to think charity must be something big and life-changing. We all like to think that our charitable actions result in a big jackpot of human change. But what if the rewards of change most often come just a nickel or two at a time?

Maybe it’s time we shift our difference-making efforts in another direction. Maybe we should be asking ourselves, “How might I make a little difference today that will matter to at least one person in the slightest way?”

Perhaps we need to challenge ourselves to give without needing to know what the difference will actually be. We must work to write our charitable stories without featuring ourselves as the hero.

I tire from my inventory task in the dimming light, but Maria doesn’t tire from reading.
“Por favor.” Please, she says, pointing to another book. “Una mas.” (One more.)

I began my day by asking myself if I could make a difference. I’m not sure I did, but I’m blessed to know that Maria seems to think I did.

But equally important perhaps, Maria made a difference in me.

Consider coming to Honduras with Chaplain Norris Burkes and inaugurate a library!
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Write Norris at comment@thechaplain.net or Twitter @chaplain or call 843-608-9715.