Dominica - The Good News Project : Building of a Library

Chances are you can walk into any local school and find a library.

But believe it or not, for some kids in the world, libraries are a relatively new concept.

Thanks to Wausau's Good News Project, hundreds of children in the West Indies now have a library of their own.

A few years ago Patti McInerney moved from Detroit, Michigan to Castle Bruce, Dominica.

An avid reader, one of the first things she set out to find was a library.

"The library used to be at the village council building. It's a small place in the village and I guess it needed more room to expand so they brought the library here to this extra classroom," says Patti.

But what Patti found at the Castle Bruce Primary School was disappointing.

She says, "What I found here was not a library. It was just a storage room for books. It wasn't a used library."

Once locals introduced Patti to Good News volunteers, it was only a matter of time.

"With the help of the Good News people, donated the paint and the wood and my husband building the shelves and the children helping to paint and organize the books, we're getting there," says Patti.

Since Good News came in and helped organize things a bit and brighten things up, the kids, who never knew what a library was before, now know what it is and are finding they like it.

"When I first opened the library, just a handful of kids would come, but now," she says, "We get about 30-50 children weekly."

Courtesy of: Wausau