Reading CaraVAN of Hope, a Mobile Library for Dagdag Dunong Reading Center ~ Philippines

Mobile libraries, or bookmobiles, are vehicles that serve as libraries on the move, bringing books and other resources to people in various locations, including remote areas and underserved communities. They come in various forms, buses, vans, boats, motorcycles, bicycles, and even animals! WBO is proud to support several mobile libraries: Umeed the camel in Pakistan, a motorcycle library in Tamil Nadu, India, and the Jeepney of Hope in the Philippines. Each of our mobile libraries serve as a vital link for communities, offering educational resources, promoting literacy, and providing a place for community members to gather. Our mobile libraries serve those who have long experienced poverty, discrimination, and are living on the edge of communities with little to minimal infrastructure and who have no access to traditional library services.

The Jeepney of Hope mobile library was one of our first projects with Ms. Ana Bacudio and her nonprofit, all volunteer Dagdag Dunong Reading Center in the Philippines. In 2014 when we donated copies of Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown to the Dagdag Dunong Reading Center, the story of a burro who brings books to hard to reach villages, convinced Ms. Ana that she could do something similar in the Philippines.  The result was the Jeepney of Hope, a stainless steel jeep loaded with books in Tagalog and English and funded by WaterBridge Outreach. For over 11 years the Jeepney of Hope brought books, story time sessions and food packages to desperately poor indigenous Mangyan children and their families in remote areas on the island of Mindoro. 

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Sadly, this past December, the Jeepney of Hope was submerged in devastating flood waters and was deemed beyond repair. Upon receiving this distressing news from Ms. Ana, we helped to finance a new mobile library so that Ms. Ana could continue the Jeepney of Hope work of  bringing books, literacy materials, and food to the Mangyan children. 

We are thrilled to announce that the new mobile library, the Reading CaraVAN of Hope, is now in operation and continuing the invaluable work that Ms. Ana and her volunteers do.

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The maiden journey of the Reading CaraVAN of Hope recently took place in the remote and mountainous area of Sitio Raugan, a Mangyan community comprising of 35 families and approximately 40 children who have no potable water and no electricity. Their lands have been confiscated by mining companies eager to profit and are backed by the government.  Ms. Ana and her team conducted storytelling sessions, read aloud to them, and had read along activities among the children and their families who were all eager participants. Books were given to the children and each head of household was given rice packs and clothes.  

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The community of Sitio Raugan will now be included on the Reading CaraVAN of Hope's route for monthly storytelling sessions. The community will also provide a space to store books so that they will be available for the children to read anytime they want.

The Reading CaraVAN of Hope was also eagerly welcomed by residents in Sitio Linao, another displaced mountain community. "We distributed goodies, bread and clothes to the children and their parents," Ms Ana said. "We brought stories, hope and joy to the children which keeps them smiling despite their struggles to cope in this new environment as their families were displaced from their ancestral land domain.”

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​The Reading CaraVAN of Hope's home base will be at the 2nd Dagdag Dunong Reading Center which was constructed in 2024 with funding from WBO. The reading center, designed to be typhoon and flood proof, provides a safe, welcoming place for children to improve their reading and writing skills. Ms. Ana  and her volunteers make the centers come alive with literacy and other educational activities for poor, disadvantaged children, many who reside on the streets. The reading center also provides the children with healthy meals each day and access to running water and toilets as well as the hand washing stations which WBO financed post pandemic.

Like the Jeepney of Hope, we are certain the Reading CaraVAN of Hope will spend many years climbing the mountains of Mindoro bringing books and stories, literacy materials, food and water to those in need.