Can kids’ books change public education?

In Honduras, where many have never seen them, educators

are saying ‘yes’

Honduras is among the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. Even before 2020 brought the
country the pandemic and back-to-back Category-4 hurricanes, nearly half of Hondurans lived in
poverty. Add climate change, gang violence and unemployment to the mix, and the country’s challenges
become even more profound.

Perhaps less widely reported is the toll these crises have on the country’s already-precarious public
education system — now shaken by two full years of pandemic closure, with no online option.

The result? Third graders who can’t read, dwindling attendance, and little attention to crumbling
infrastructure. All in a country where only one-third of kids make it to high school, and many have
parents who don’t read at all.

One not-for-profit organization is trying to change some of those statistics — one book at a time.

At the Centro Education Basica Guatemala in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa, librarian Jacklin Avila
Galindo reads “Carmen La Estrella” to a group of boisterous students. The book is about a little girl who
loves to sing and dance. A pretty run-of-the-mill scene in the U.S., but in Honduras it’s revolutionary.

That’s because in this country, children’s books are as rare as the unicorns in the story.

That’s where Chispa Project comes in. Founder Sarah Brakhane explains that kids books are not only a
first for the students who are accustomed to rote learning and textbooks, but that many teachers
haven’t seen one either. So Chispa is helping schools create libraries and then providing teachers and
families with extensive training about how to use books.

“Sometimes people from the United States ask me ‘what methodology are you using,’” Brakhane says.
“And we say ‘honestly, the 3-2 method. Three fingers in front, two fingers in back and this is how you
hold up a book!”

In other words, even reading aloud to kids is new. And the goal isn’t just to improve literacy, though
that’s an important one. Ultimately, Chispa — through its libraries and kids’ books — is trying to change
the way teachers view education, teaching them to animate students’ creativity and foster critical
thinking through books.

“A lot of that isn’t second nature for our teachers because they didn’t grow up with it, but also because
they didn’t get it in college,” Brakhane says. The reason? “The college itself never thought teachers
would have children’s books in their schools.”

Over the last six years, Chispa has distributed 43,000 books and installed libraries in 78 schools. The
projects are funded entirely by donations, with a requirement that school communities fundraise about
3% of the cost. That, Brakhane says, creates a sense of ownership and pride even in the poorest schools.

Librarian Galindo says the library at her school has been a game changer. In the cement-walled building,
where students don’t have flushable toilets, the brightly painted library filled with colorful books makes
kids want to be in school.

“Students can relax here,” she says, adding that the new books often aspects of the kids’ culture or
characters they’ve seen on TV. She laughs describing older kids who are drawn to “Peppa Pig” books.
And is proud that her students were so enthusiastic about dinosaur books that she had to dig deep into
the subject to keep up with them.

14-year-old Allison, among the older students in the library, says her favorite new book is a graphic
novel about a bully and how a young girl navigates her relationship with her nemesis. Allison flips quickly
through the pages, describing how the young protagonist worries she might vomit during her school
presentation. And the best part of the book? She says it’s part of a series — something she never knew
existed.

School principal Bernardo Guttierez is proud of what his school is achieving — a refuge for many of the
kids whose families can’t provide housing or medicine, let alone books. He also talks about the country’s
legacy of violence.

Those realities add to Chispa’s challenges. Gleen Miralda is the group’s Educational Coordinator. And
he’s determined to give kids what he didn’t have when he attended the same schools a decade ago. He
talks about the weary buildings, the lack of public investment and the gangs.

“The violence has always been a major part of our country’s history,” Miralda says. “But in the past
years, it’s increased.”

He says it means families have to take their kids out of the schools and sometimes, leave the country.

“In some zones, gangs control the school,” he says. “They sometimes enter the school during the school
day.”

Miralda says the effect on children and on schools is profound. Particularly in cases where kids are put to
work by the gangs.

“They call them banderas… this small informant that can run around unnoticed,” he says, adding that
they might also be used to smuggle drugs.

Aside from just schools, he says gangs can control entire neighborhoods. “And by control, I mean who
comes into the neighborhood, who goes out. The gang might cancel classes one day because
something’s going down in the neighborhood. And some of the students themselves are kids of gang
members. And of course, those kids have to be accepted into the school even though teachers know
who they are.”

The incendiary dynamics are challenging for Chispa.

“Sometimes it’s very internal,” Miralda says. “We might not even know the things that are happening
between the authorities and the gang members. A school director might call to make sure we can get
through that day. Yes, it’s risky, but it’s complicated.”

When asked “Risky for who?” Miralda says “For us.” But adds, without pausing, that it’s worth the risks.
Other obstacles Chispa faces are less delicate, but still complicated. Among them is getting books into
disparate rural regions where handfuls of students learn in multi-age school rooms. These settings may
lack electricity and cell phone service. The roads connecting them are frequently washed out and
inaccessible, and the villages may be 20 or more miles apart.

The solution? Think “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” except in this case, it’s a series of backpacks.
Dunia Estrada is Chispa’s Technical Coordinator and architect of the simple idea: putting a pile of books
into a backpack and distributing one to every teacher in a region.

“Those teachers will then exchange or rotate their backpacks every two weeks to a month,” Estrada
says. “And this is how, for example, in one of our school systems, we’ve been able to get 800 different
books to 500 different students.”

She continues “And that’s why we call it a traveling library.”

On the other side of Tegucigalpa, principal Ana Joaquina Garcia at the Centro Educativo China says it’s
important to understand that the school’s new library is keeping kids in school. She tells the story of a
mother from her disadvantaged neighborhood who was forced to move for economic reasons, yet she
tried to commute back to the school, with her three children, for months.

“She tried to do it…because of the library space, because of the opportunities,” she says. “Kids don’t
want to leave.”

Garcia adds that just before we arrived at the school, she was recently visited by officials from
Honduras’ Department of Education. They wanted to find out more about the library and innovative
teaching. She says word is spreading.

Back at the Chispa headquarters — a small bungalow-style house —founder Brakhane sits at a long table
covered in books. In the nearby living room, 120 boxes (about 6,000 titles) are waiting to be unpacked
and shelves lining the walls are filled with picture books, chapter books, board books and more.

It’s impossible for Chispa to keep up with the demand and “none of these schools necessarily deserves
these books more than another,” Brakhane says.

She says the waiting list for a library is now two to three years and that Chispa can only complete about
10 a year. Each of them costs about $15,000 including the books, trainings, maintenance and set up.

In a country with overwhelming need, Brakhane recognizes that there’s only so much Chispa can do. Yet
she’s not discouraged.

She says that, “in English, there’s the story of the stranded starfish,” and goes on to describe the tale of
a little girl who throws a starfish back into the sea after a storm — leaving thousands of others still
stranded on the sand. When someone asks how that will make a difference, she answers that she “made
a difference for that one.”

In Spanish, Brakhane continues, the analogy is to grains of sand — that it takes single grains to build a
sandcastle. “So we are going to keep fighting to put down our grain of sand.”

She notes that in Spanish “chispa” means spark: “The spark from a fire, or the chocolate chips, chispas,
that you put in a cookie.”
“But it’s also used to describe a person,” she says. “So someone having chispa means that they’re a
person who is going to go out and do bigger things. That they have the excitement for life. And we know
that our kids have that.

“There’s not an ultimate goal. And there’s maybe not an end in sight.” Brakhane pauses before adding
quietly, “But this is our grain of sand. And we’re going to fight for that.”