Earlier this year, Viterbo Education Club members decided to support the Lending Library initiative of Gundersen Global Partners. In March 2014, the Global Partners–Nicaragua team opened a lending library in a small primary school located on the Santa Rita coffee plantation high in the mountains of central Nicaragua. It cost approximately $2,000 to establish the first lending library in this region of Nicaragua.

Viterbo Education Club members learned that in the rural Matagalpa region of Nicaragua, literacy rates range from 25–60 percent of the total population and less than 35 percent of the children complete primary school. Club members decided fundraising proceeds would be donated to support a second lending library located in a rural area of Nicaragua where library books have not been available. Through numerous events and fundraisers, members of the Education Club raised $1,000. In the photo, elementary education majors Brooke Simon and Ashley Thornton presented Sheila Riley of Global Partners with the donation in May.