Six­teen-year-old McKen­zie-Re­ece Ma­habir is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the lives of chil­dren one page at a time.

She of­fi­cial­ly opened a mi­ni li­brary, Tales and Trails Lit­tle Li­brary, at Palmiste Park in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day on World Lit­er­a­cy Day.

The Form Five Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School stu­dent knows the im­por­tance of read­ing and wants to share her pas­sion with oth­er chil­dren by mak­ing books eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble in a wel­com­ing space.

Ex­plain­ing that the idea came from her love for read­ing, she said every child, no mat­ter his or her back­ground, should be able to en­joy and feel the love of read­ing and get­ting lost in a good book.

“The li­brary is open on World Lit­er­a­cy Day be­cause of the im­por­tance of read­ing. I think read­ing is the foun­da­tion for all ed­u­ca­tion­al life and lit­er­a­cy es­pe­cial­ly be­cause lit­er­a­cy is the build­ing blocks that a child de­vel­ops at ear­ly ages that help them through com­mu­ni­ca­tion and so­cial skills and ba­si­cal­ly ed­u­ca­tion for life so I think this is a good start for them to just start read­ing, so­cialise in the park and help them through their ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

McKen­zie-Reese not­ed that the li­brary was free of charge to the pub­lic, but the books were not to be re­moved from the park and must be re­turned.   

Ad­mit­ting that ini­tial­ly she was con­cerned about theft and van­dal­ism, she said the ini­tia­tive was built on trust in the com­mu­ni­ty so she doesn’t be­lieve it would be a big prob­lem.

“I’d like to in­vite all kids, I would like you to come vis­it and en­joy these books. Par­ents bring them, and spread a blan­ket or a sheet and en­joy all their books and bring them back when they are fin­ished,” she said. 

Com­mend­ing McKen­zie-Reese on her ini­tia­tive, Ter­rence Hon­ore, pres­i­dent of the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety, de­scribed her as an en­tre­pre­neur of love and shar­ing. He en­cour­aged her to con­tin­ue to be an “ex­am­ple to young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Prais­ing McKen­zie-Reese for un­der­tak­ing a lead­er­ship role, Usha Ram­per­sad, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, called on the com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port her ini­tia­tive.

She added, “In this day and age when we know there are is­sues of safe­ty and crime we need the com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment to be the keep­er of some­thing like this and that will re­al­ly be a re­al sup­port for her and for oth­ers to con­tin­ue with dri­ves like these. This is some­thing we re­al­ly need to see our youths in­volved in.”  

The li­brary will be open from 9 am to 6 pm dai­ly, and any­one will­ing to do­nate can con­tact McKen­zie-Reese through her In­sta­gram page tale­sand­trails.tt.