Guatemala Book Bus

Thank you to all the District 5050 clubs who continue to support the Rotary Centennial Literacy Project in Guatemala.

Eight years on, because of our support, the book bus still puts books into the hands of Mayan children in the Chimaltenango mountainous region of Guatemala. These children have limited access to schooling and especially books.

The school bus was converted to a book bus in 2005/6 with a matching grant of $40,000. Rotary supported it with approximately $10,000 a year for five years to sustain the service by paying the librarian and driver salaries, maintaining the vehicle and replacing and mending books and equipment.

The bus is managed through Probigua; a Guatemalan organization that partly funds libraries and schools through their language school. See their website www.probigua.org and watch the video interview with the director Rigoberto featuring the bus.

The bus on a bi-weekly schedule reaches approximately 38,000 students annually in villages with no other library.

In fact the presence of the book mobile has been the impetus for some of the villages to build libraries.

If any club would like more information to support this very worthy international literacy project in 2014 please contact Rhian Piprell 778 227 4132 or piprellr@gmail.com