Access to lifelong learning: in Haiti, where books are scarce and too many children do not know how to read, a network of small libraries is making a difference.

• Author: Minsky, Tequila

Five thousand books don't seem like much for a public library--the average New York City branch has around has 100,000 volumes--but imagine that collection for a royal with a population of 21,300, where students at the rive primary schools and two high schools have textbooks only if they're lucky. Until recently, this town in Haiti had no library at all.

The town is Chardonnieres, far from the capital of Port-au-Prince--a seven-hour drive south on the broken main road and through more than eleven rivers. For the last two hours of the trip, where the road heads north at the sea, cliffs covered with scrub brush rise above the water, and long scenic stretches separate a handful of towns.

The community library opened in Chardonnieres six years ago, originally financed by people who emigrated from the town to the United States and settled in the Boston area. It was housed in a building that had been owned and abandoned by the nearby Catholic Church and then rehabilitated; but two years after the library opened, foreign interest and support drifted away. Then, FOKAL--an acronym in Haitian Creole--one of the two official languages of Haiti--for the Fondasyon Konesans ak Libere (Foundation for Knowledge with Liberty)--took on the project.

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The twelve-year-old FOKAL organization, which receives funding from George Soros's Open Society Institute, supports community libraries in remote and rural regions in Haiti, as well as in some small towns, secondary cities, and underserved neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. In a country where half the children under eighteen cannot read and many who can have no books, FOKAL provides access to a new world. Since its inception, the organization has responded to Haitian youth's hunger for knowledge. Unlike the country's three other library systems, including the national libraries, the FOKAL-supported ones are initiated and sustained by associations within the community.

For the town's students, the Chardonnieres library--like many of the other 35 in the FOKAL network--provides a highlight in the daily routine. On their way home from school, many students stop at the location, on the town's main street, to make use of a quiet, clean place to do their homework. Over the years, this has become not only a place for books, reading, and research, but also a nexus for community cultural activities.

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"When the Chardonnieres library opened in 2001," recalled founder and director Ernest Pierre-Louis, "the people in the town weren't used to the idea of a library." An intent man in his 30s, Pierre-Louis organized activities such as theater, dance, and debates to draw people in. Once they were there, he would...