Provide Quality Education to 15000 Amazon Children

Vaga Lume Expedition Programme, responsible for taking literature books to Amazon children and training reading mediators to connect them, is structured in a network of 23 municipalities. In every municipality there are several rural communities and each of them owns its own library we have created and still maintain. According to the funding we receive and the demand from neighbour communities, we are able to create new libraries and achieve a greater public.

In 2009, we went on a partnership with a big private company and created a project to take the Expedition Programme to different municipalities. We were beginning to actually see the difference literature makes to the development of community people and we imagined how our work could be relevant to regional development in the long run. We wanted to grow on impact over the Brazilian Legal Amazon Region and provide education to all or at least most of amazon children.

As the company invested a great amount of money that outdid our regular expenses, we dared to create a third geographical level, besides municipalities and communities: “poles”. Every pole consisted of one municipality where Vaga Lume was already established and other one where we would implement new libraries. Our team worked intensely training new volunteers, engaging local governments, selecting collections and sending books from São Paulo to the Amazon.

After no more than one year, we had created 8 new libraries that demanded much more attention than the other ones and our team had not grown bigger. The new project started diverting from our regular activities, because our investor had too much influence in our work. Simultaneously, we were not able to deliver the immediate results they expected and, therefore, we ended the partnership.

After that experience, we have learnt two lessons: growing quantitatively does not necessarily mean growing qualitatively and although we should consider the interests of all stakeholders, we should not let investors alone interfere in our work. Currently, our plans include creating new libraries when the ones already established are settled and we are developing new forms of expanding which will keep up with the enlargement of our team. In search of financial sustainability, we are diversifying sources of funding and focusing on the power of individuals gathered by their will to help. We have learnt to take one step at a time!