By Louino Robillard | Project co-initiator
Konbit Bibliyotek Site Soley has made remarkable progress over the 38 weeks since it has began. The in-person fundraising happening in Haiti has been continuing to progress, over 3,750 individual donors have contributed almost 5,500 books, and almost 1.5 million gourdes (around $23,500 USD).
Last week, the Mayor of Cite Soleil and the Minister of the Interior authorized construction permits for the initiative, which means that the project has the go-ahead to begin construction as soon as we would like! The team is conferring with the volunteer engineers to find out how much more they think we will need in order to begin construction on the library and computer rooms.
In the meantime, fundraising and friendraising continues! Volunteers are presentng the idea on Haitian radio stations, in front of audiences at sports events, organizing concerts and other sociocultural events as fundraisers, and of course, going door to door in Cite Soleil and beyond.
In honor of the library initiative, Radio Boukman (Cite Soleil's only community radio station) will soon be launching a regular radio show dedicated to promoting literacy and a love of books. This shows that the library project is already changing perceptions about reading in the community.
Thank you so much for your contributions and thank you even more for your patience - it may seem as if things are moving slowly, because this is an organic, community-driven, volunteer-led process. In some ways, the process is the most important part: with every conversastion about the library, we are changing the narrative about Cite Soleil and promoting community-let development in Haiti.
We will update this page again as soon as we know when construction will begin! In the meantime, feel free to send any comments, questions, or ideas, please write to robillard.louino@gmail.com
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