EL BIBLIOBANDIDO

For years, Marisa Morán Jahn (Studio REV-) has been pushing the envelope on art & ideas to educate the young and underprivileged in ways that stick. And, to help drop the high illiteracy rates in Honduran communities, she and her team of local collaborators have called upon the book-eating bandit with the most ravenous appetite for stories: El Bibliobandido!

Who is El Bibliobandido? An insatiable lover of tales, whose unending appetite for new stories has had the tremendous benefit of boosting literacy and creative thinking in Honduras. According to legend, this peculiar bandito will pester people until they feed him a new story. Consequently, reading and bookmaking are all on the rise! These days, many children in the region believe in El Bibliobandido as much as Santa Claus. And with encouragement, interest, and support pouring in from all over, Marisa’s ready to take her workshop to the next level.

A video about the project has already circulated abroad amongst libraries, museums, schools, and film festivals. Next stop: the world wide web — and with this AWB grant, El Bibliobandido will be be able to do just that. It’ll help cover translations, printing, and developing a full-fledged web curriculum. The end result is an educator’s dream starter kit for unleashing a love of reading. Who knew a thief could encourage us to read?

For more on the world’s most notorious burglar, check out Bibliobandido’s home page, or connect with Marisa on Facebook and Twitter.