Villages Library Project

Part of Ten Friends’ Villages Library project is to provide libraries for those villages in which a book is a rare thing.  In 2009, we established our very first library in the village of Lingham and dedicated it to Diane Jacobsen, a revered teacher from Sisters, Oregon.  Over the next two years nine more libraries were established and dedicated to a number of individuals from Central Oregon.  Throughout the years The program continued to grow and we now have more than 35 libraries in place!

A typical village in which we place a library has from 100 to 400 residents.  The cost of one book placed in a library is around $5 – roughly $2 for the book and $3 to transport the book by plane and/or porter.  Bookcases are constructed by village carpenters and the village provides the building for the library.  The average total cost of a library is around $6,000.  

Summer 2023 Student Library Project

Over the years, Ten Friends has taken high school students to Nepal 6 times and over 50 students have had the experience. Ten Friends once again took a group of Central Oregon students to Nepal in August 2023.  As part of the trip students and their chaperones worked on a library project in one of the remote villages of Nepal.  

2023 Larry's Library Project

Our most recent library was created in the village of Khokatak in the Makalu region. The library was dedicated in October 2023 with Ten Friends Board member Larry Weinberg in attendance.  He was accompanied to the dedication ceremony by Sunita Gurung, Director of the Himalayan Education Center. The library is located in an elementary school, but the library itself is a community library, open to all the villagers. A large number of village residents, including the teachers, staff and students at the school and the school board, were present at the ceremony.  There was music, dancing and speeches to inaugurate the village's first library.