As a child, I ran across the quotation "Better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness."
Carlos Leite, a Brazilian who lives on the edge of poverty, seems to have done just that.
Illiterate, he has amassed a library of 10,000 volumes, which he has made available to his community of Sao Goncala. Brazilians, on average, read less than 2 books per year (America reads 5, according to the article). There are few or no public libraries there, and although the government has launched a campaign to build public libraries, the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly.
Leite couldn't wait.
"Those of us who grew up here, we know what the needs of the community are," he said. "I stopped and thought, 'Wait a minute. There's not a single library. The schools have libraries, but there's no public library.' So I said, 'Let's make this dream come true.' "