The Chain Collaborative

“If communities cannot come to the library, the library will go to the communities.”

The Chain Collaborative is raising funds to support one of our Alumni Network partners, Yuyarina Pacha, to take their next big step.

Two years ago, Yuyarina Pacha shared a dream with the world: to build a home where their community could read, innovate, and imagine. Thanks to collaboration with a larger funder and countless individuals who donated through GoFundMe, Yuyarina Pacha was able to meet their dream and build their Casa Grande, a three-floor library of chonta wood and thatched roof. Designed by architectural studio Al Borde and nestled in the buffer zone of the UNESCO Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, the Casa Grade is now a beautiful and thriving library space where youth and children can encounter books, stories, and new visions of the future.

Alongside the building of the library, Yuyarina Pacha also participated in The Chain Collaborative (TCC)'s Community-Led Development Incubator program in order to launch a community-led project of their choosing. Through the Incubator, they focused on training their Casa Grande team, building their capacity for impact measurement, and making plans for the library's expansion.

Now, in 2026, as part of TCC's Alumni Network, Yuyarina Pacha is ready to grow. With the support of friends, allies, and local community members, they recently finalized their first Yuyarina cart, a small trailer that serves as a mobile library. Affectionately named the "Wawa Yuyarina" — wawa means baby/kid in Kichwa — the Yuyarina cart plans to travel the area's many rainforest roads, visiting remote, hard-to-reach communities who are unable to access the Casa Grande on their own.

But, the Wawa Yuyarina needs your help to do just that. "Yuyarina On The Move" is a 6-month pilot program that aims to leverage the mobile library to bring books, games, and educational experiences to rural communities across the provinces of Orellana and Sucumbíos. With your support, Yuyarina Pacha will be able to outfit the first mobile library with learning materials, purchase fuel for its many journeys, and most importantly, spend time in each community training educators.

With every visit of the library, Yuyarina Pacha's team will demonstrate to local educators how to instill a love of learning in children, teach reading comprehension to students of all ages, and motivate communities to come together around education. This will support existing educational structures and processes in Amazonian communities, and ensure that local educators can conduct reading and learning activities even when the mobile library is absent.

Your donation today will allow for:

For every dollar raised in this campaign, The Chain Collaborative has secured match funding through our Alumni Network Small Project Fund to double your impact. This means that your contribution has twice the power to set the library in motion.

To learn more, watch Yuyarina Pacha's video.