Vol. IV · No. 112 Wednesday, 12 August 2026 Foundation Supplement · Accounts to 31 March 2026

The Slow Mile

Dispatches from the road, the work, and the long way round

The Pallet Library Foundation

Eleven libraries, twenty-four scholarships, and one rule about photographs

We build reading rooms in rural highland schools and pay fees for students who would otherwise stop at fifteen. We publish every đồng, and we do not put children's faces on fundraising pages.

Founded 2022 | Registered in Gia Lai | Accounts below

Photograph — a finished reading room, no faces

Library No. 9. Built from reclaimed shipping pallets in eleven days by six parents and one very patient carpenter.

It started because a school we visited had 340 students and 60 books, most of them curriculum texts too damaged to lend. The head teacher did not ask us for anything. She mentioned it once, in passing, in the way people mention a thing they have stopped expecting to change.

Four years on we have built eleven reading rooms across Gia Lai and Kon Tum. The model has not changed much: reclaimed pallets, local labour paid at local rates, books chosen by the teachers rather than by us, and a maintenance payment that lands every year rather than a ribbon-cutting that happens once.

We are deliberately small. There are three of us, none full-time, and we have turned down money twice when it came with conditions we could not honour.

11

Reading rooms built since 2022

24

Students on scholarship this year

6,800

Books placed and catalogued

91¢

Of every dollar reaching a school

The Programmes

Three things, done repeatedly, rather than ten done once

Programme one · Since 2022

The Pallet Library

A reading room built into an unused classroom or covered yard, using reclaimed pallet timber and local carpenters. Roughly 41 million đồng each, of which books are about a fifth. Every library gets a maintenance payment each year for five years, because the ones that fail do not fail on opening day — they fail in year three when a shelf breaks and nobody has 200,000 đồng to fix it.

Cost to build one: approx. $1,620 · Next site: Kon Tum province, October

Programme two · Since 2023

Fees & the eighteen months after

Twenty-four students, mostly girls, mostly the first in their family to reach upper secondary. We pay fees, uniform and transport — and then keep paying attention for eighteen months after the scholarship ends, which is the part nobody funds and the point at which most of them fall over. That follow-on support is now a third of the programme budget.

Cost per student, per year: approx. $310

Programme three · Since 2025

Teacher stipends for reading hours

A library nobody has time to staff is a storeroom. We pay a small monthly stipend to one teacher per school to run two reading hours a week, keep the catalogue, and chase overdue books. It is the least photogenic thing we fund and, by some distance, the thing that decides whether any of the rest works.

Cost per school, per year: approx. $240

Where the money went

Year to 31 March 2026 — full statement available on request

Income and expenditure, year to 31 March 2026 (USD equivalent)
LineAmount
Individual donations$18,940
5% levy on Highland Passage trips$7,310
One institutional grant$5,000
Library construction & books (4 sites)−$12,180
Scholarships & follow-on support−$9,640
Teacher stipends−$2,640
Maintenance payments, libraries 1–7−$1,480
Administration, banking & audit−$2,590
Carried into 2026–27$2,720

The rule about photographs

We do not publish images of identifiable children, and we do not use a child's story to raise money. It costs us donations — we know, we have tested it — and we are not going to change it. Everything you see on this page is a building, a document, or an adult who has agreed to be here.

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