From bottles to bricks: A library built with recycled bottles; Peace Corps, August 13, 2025

By Liz S., Peace Corps; From bottles to bricks: A library built with recycled bottles

"Uganda’s rural communities face significant challenges in literacy rates and reading comprehension skills.

As a Peace Corps Education Volunteer, I witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by students in rural communities due to limited access to reading materials. Determined to make a difference, I embarked on a mission to create a library at a primary school in the Central Region of Uganda. With the help of the community, local organizations, and a Peace Corps small grant, we built an eco-brick library that has become a hub for learning and community engagement. The library has not only improved students' reading skills but also fostered a culture of discipline and community involvement.

Envisioning a school library

Once we set the goal of improving students' access to reading materials, a new challenge emerged: physical space. The primary school, a small school with a large student population, didn’t have an extra classroom or storage area for books. But there was the abundance of unused land surrounding the school. There was space—just not enough classrooms. That’s when the idea of creating a library building emerged. After discussing the idea with my supervisor, we decided to pursue a Peace Corps grant to fund the construction. The next step was determining the materials for the library.

The community’s first eco-brick building

I proposed using eco-bricks, plastic bottles filled with soil that act as building blocks. Not only are eco-bricks an environmentally friendly solution to plastic waste, but they also offer an educational opportunity for students to learn about conservation. The Peace Corps grants coordinator connected me with Ichupa Upcycle Project, an organization founded by a former Peace Corps Volunteer that supports eco-brick projects in Uganda.

Building the library: A community effort

Over the course of the next year, school staff and I worked alongside the Ichupa team to build the library from the ground up. The workers oversaw the construction and educated students on plastic pollution. Meanwhile, I worked with parents and teachers to collect plastic bottles, which we used to create eco-bricks. Every week, school children and community members gathered to fill bottles with soil. The eco-bricking process became a community-wide effort, with everyone contributing in whatever way they could."

Rekindling Indigenous Knowledge; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, November 29, 2024

 Jalyn Williams, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Rekindling Indigenous Knowledge

"Following a painful period of westward removals, the Delaware Tribe and Delaware Nation resettled in Oklahoma, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community resettled in Wisconsin. They are the three federally recognized Lenape Tribal Nations in the United States. 

Partnering to find solutions

Together, the three Tribes resolved to create a fellowship program to provide opportunities for Tribal citizens, particularly young adults, to discover new facets of their heritage by visiting the places their ancestors lived and taking part in immersive educational programming focusing on the ecology and cultural resource management of the Lënapehòkink."

At a routine meeting with agency staff in 2022, Lenape representatives remarked on the difficulty of providing Traditional Ecological Knowledge about land they were removed from generations ago. While a grant from the National Park Service had funded trips for Lenape to visit their ancestral homeland in the Delaware Watershed, that program had been discontinued. 

The Tribes would have to seek a different route to Lënapehòkink...

Fortunately, Ryder directed the Tribes to a new funding source that could help – the America the Beautiful Challenge grant. Administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in conjunction with the U.S. Department of the Interior and other agency partners, the program encourages applicants to develop diverse, landscape-level projects that showcase cumulative benefits to fish and wildlife, engage with and benefit underserved communities, and connect people with nature.

Ryder and her team provided technical assistance to help the Tribes apply for the grant and in November 2022, they received $723,200 in funding. The grant’s match requirement was covered by a contribution from Native Americans in Philanthropy, a network of Native and non-Native nonprofits, Tribal communities, foundations and community leaders committed to sharing resources in the Native tradition of reciprocity.

Together, the three Tribes resolved to create a fellowship program to provide opportunities for Tribal citizens, particularly young adults, to discover new facets of their heritage by visiting the places their ancestors lived and taking part in immersive educational programming focusing on the ecology and cultural resource management of the Lënapehòkink."

Houston school district to turn libraries into disciplinary centers; The Guardian, July 29, 2023

 Erum Salam, The Guardian; Houston school district to turn libraries into disciplinary centers

"The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year.

Houston independent school district announced earlier this summer that librarian and media-specialist positions in 28 schools will be eliminated as part of superintendent Mike Miles’s “new education system” initiative.

Teachers at these schools will soon have the option to send misbehaving students to these discipline centers, or “team centers’” – designated areas where they will continue to learn remotely...

Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, condemned the district’s move and said the solution to the problem of behavioral conduct was not to revoke access to books, especially in these underserved communities.

He said: “Are there students who need additional support? Yes, and I am 100% supportive of that. But it’s not an eithe/or. You don’t close the libraries, remove the librarians, and simply have the books on the shelf. What about all the other students? What are you saying to them?”"

What if "Sesame Street" Were Open Access?; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), October 25, 2019

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); What if "Sesame Street" Were Open Access?

"The news of iconic children’s television show “Sesame Street”’s new arrangement with the HBO MAX streaming service has sent ripples around the Internet. Starting this year, episodes of “Sesame Street” will debut on HBO and on the HBO MAX service, with new episodes being made available to PBS “at some point.” Parents Television Council’s Tim Winter recently told New York Times that “HBO is holding hostage underprivileged families” who can no longer afford to watch new “Sesame Street” episodes.

The move is particularly galling because the show is partially paid for with public funding. Let's imagine an alternative: what if “Sesame Street” were open access? What if the show’s funding had come with a requirement that it be made available to the public?"