Our history
Fifteen years, one page at a time.
From an epiphany in a mountain village to a national policy change. Scroll the story.
2009
An epiphany at Cange
At a Rotary leaders meeting in Haiti, Dr. Sara Mansbach visits villages where children have never seen a picture book. She finds a new life purpose.
2011
The volunteer years begin
An all volunteer Rotary Charities committee starts developing village libraries in the Central Plateau and the Artibonite. Over the next decade it donates more than 5,000 French and Kreyòl books and trains teachers and library workers.
2016
Making our own books
With an Australian Rotary club and a Haitian team of illustrators and translators, six Kreyòl easy readers are co published. The Alfabè Kreyòl Mwen alphabet chart, thirteen years in the making with MIT linguists, reaches 98 schools, 95 teachers and 3,800 students.
2021
PILH becomes independent
Federal 501(c)(3) status arrives, EIN 87-0904773. Independence brings talented people, a paid Haitian consultant, and real fundraising for a growing waiting list of villages.
2022
The Duplan project launches
At the village's request, PILH begins modernizing the twenty year old Methodist Community Library: a Kreyòl collection, six new Chromebooks, and an eleven module training curriculum led by Erick Toussaint.
2022
Kreyòl becomes the language of the classroom
Haiti's Ministry of Education decrees that children learn in Kreyòl, the mother tongue. The premise PILH built on for a decade becomes national policy.
2025
Three thousand books and counting
Over 3,000 PILH Kreyòl books are now in children's hands across rural Haiti, and the model keeps scaling: five libraries mentored, a waiting list of villages, and a generation learning to love reading in its own language.
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Where the story goes next
A training center at Duplan that educates library workers for the whole country. More villages off the waiting list. You are welcome to write the next chapter with us.