An update from AOR owners Bruce & Lyn Whittle, on their Vanuatu Library Project journey…
“Well, we finally got to Vanuatu and installed 2 libraries. It was a very humbling experience to stay in the village while we worked on the libraries, especially the smaller school at Bene. That one had only been established about 18 months and had absolutely no books other than writing pads.
That school was about 1/2 hours drive from where we stayed at Natawa village.
Anyway, despite being well represented at the BRB, AOR was also well represented in Vanuatu!!!
Hope you enjoy looking at the photos and we really appreciated the support from AOR.
The only downside of the whole event was that the Vanuatu Customs demanded AUD$2,000 to release the containers. They called it a “mission tax” – what a laugh!!!! They charge you to help the poorer communities! Luckily, we had raised sufficient from our Quiz Night and we were able to pay the “tax”.
Note my shoes, I didn’t do the usually quality check before leaving on the trip and blew 2 tires at Brisbane Airport. Luckily, the flight was cancelled (plane broken – yikes) and we stayed in Brisbane City that night. I purchased a new pair of shoes in the city before we left the next morning!!!!”
- Bruce & Lyn Whittle
THE VANUATU LIBRARY PROJECT – BRUCE & LYN WHITTLE
As part of the The Library Project Vanuatu, owners Bruce and Lyn Whittle, along with their team will be travelling to the island of Santo in June to set up two school libraries in remote villages.
AOR donated a Flexible Solar Kit to be auctioned off, to assist with the funding of a container to transport the shelving, 2000 books as well as gift boxes for each child in the school.
A note from Bruce:
“Wow, the Quiz Night was a real success and the items donated by AOR were a real hit with plenty of bids. I also attached a couple of photos from the final book sort day down at Calgary College last weekend.This was just a small sample of the books we dealt with on the day and all are now packed in boxes and ready for the container.”
We wish them the best of luck and are happy we can help along the way!