#temwen

In July of 2015, Habele sounded the call. An eager Peace Corps Volunteer, working with local educators and families, sought to restore a school based library in Pohnpei, Micronesia. Temwen School is a small and rural Elementary school in the Madolenihmw municipality of Pohnpei. Temwen School has a small staff of seven teachers and one Peace Corps Volunteer; the Principal Elcid Joseph is a teaching principal. The library had to be built from scratch. Staff members of Temwen Elementary School worked tirelessly to salvage books from all different areas of the school grounds. Then they renovated an older structure of the campus.

In her request for help, Librarian and Peace Corps Volunteer Sarah Winston conveyed a severe need and genuine local ownership in the plan to address it. We implored Habele's donors and volunteers, explaining "Book donations are vital for this project to succeed."

Habele is proud to report our generous donors and volunteers helped do just that! As Sarah reports on her blog, "For months, almost a year, I have worked with my fellow teachers to create the Temwen Community Library. Many people living in America helped make the library a success by donating books, so thank you, your kindness has made this space a reality. To date we have approximately 1,300 books!"

Habele was proud to also provide the hardworking educators at Temwen with t-shirts as small token of our support for their great work!

Habele continues to collect donations of books -and money to pay for their delivery- to Temwen. We are also working to support similar efforts in Tomil on Yap and Eauripik in the Outer Islands of Yap. We have outstanding -and unmet- requests from school based libraries in North Fanif (Yap) and Satowan (Chuuk) as well. Habele is an all volunteer, US-based, IRS-recognized nonprofit. Help us answer the call!