Double Booked: Two Libraries Celebrate their Birthday!

A little over a year ago, we installed a library at both Manuel Bueso Pineda and César A. Cueva Elementary Schools in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. An amazing group of volunteers came down for 11 days to bring these libraries to life! Over the course of their first year, both of these libraries have become sources of inspiration, joy, peace, and belonging for the kiddos in these 2 schools.

Manuel Bueso Pineda Elementary School:
This library, filled with 500 new books, is central to education for the 210 kids and 12 teachers at this school. We know that books change the story, but here’s how we saw that in action in this library’s first year:

teachers and their classes averaged 1 weekly library visit,
and holistically, students went from not reading for pleasure at all to reading for an average of 49 minutes weekly - surpassing our reading goal of 45 minutes per week!

This school has also taken great strides in taking ownership of their library and ensuring its sustainability. They created a very successful overnight check-out program for the books, meaning hundreds of stories made their way to student’s houses to be read after school. They also hosted local fundraising initiatives to invest in expanding their book collection through Chispa Project!

César A. Cueva Elementary School:
The 284 kids and 13 teachers at this school are similarly maximizing the use of their 600-book collection!

Classes visited the library every 1.5 weeks on average
and, students averaged 46 minutes of reading weekly - also surpassing our reading goal of 45 minutes per week!

Our model includes 2 years of follow up, because building a lasting culture of reading takes time, strategy, and accountability. So, we are still walking alongside these schools, supporting these communities through another school year to help them fully embrace a culture of reading!

Our end of year survey of these educational communities adds to this story. It showed that:

90% of teachers across the 2 schools agree or strongly agree that their students are now more independent, fluid readers, with better comprehension and vocabulary than they’d ever seen prior to having a library. These teachers agree that the library has improved the overall quality of education at the school and the pride they feel in their institution. This sentiment is mirrored unanimously among the parents, who also agree that this library has had a strong, positive impact on their school community.

But really, who better to describe the impact than the community itself. Here’s a short video from the teachers and students at these two schools.

They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some of our best from these two schools in their first years with their libraries. And, three cheers to many more incredible memories that are sure to happen during this 2026 school year!

Manuel Bueso Pineda Elementary School: