GFC On the Road has launched a new feature: sharing the voices of our grantee partners and extending grassroots knowledge globally through guest blogging. The following post is from Siphone Sengvandy of Big Brother Mouse. Big Brother Mouse offers a creative outlet for local talents to illustrate and publish books in the Lao language and brings books to rural children who have often not seen, let alone owned, a book that is not part of their school curriculum. GFC’s grant enables Big Brother Mouse to conduct up to 16 book dissemination parties, through which more than 2,600 children obtain their very first book, as well as create and publish more books in Lao to provide a more diverse collection of books for the children.

Ban Phatouptai, Laos - It costs us just $250 to $400 to go into a rural village and hold a book party at a village school. For three hours, we talk about books, play games, serve refreshments, and do a short art lesson for 80 to 250 (or even more) kids. Then each of them gets to select a book—nearly always the first book they’ve ever owned. Finally, we leave another 50 books with the teacher so kids can swap their book for a different one after they read it.

On Friday, February 13, Big Brother Mouse held a book party in Ban Phatouptai. At the end of the party, all the kids got free books of their own, and we left more books with the school. We delivered a total of 223 books to Ban Phatouptai.

Read more