LEILA FUJIMORI / LFUJIMORI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Loading up a shipping container headed for Majuro in the Marshall Islands with boxes containing books is Marc Haeringer, 17, whose project will provide 60,000 books to a school in Majuro.
Hawaii student helps
expand Majuro library
Marc Haeringer's idea to provide books for the needy mushroomed into filling a 24-foot shipping container with volumes headed for a school library in Majuro in the Marshall Islands.
Seventeen-year-old Haeringer, his parents, family friends Dick Foytich and Lorraine Sakaguchi, and four hired hands loaded about 1,500 boxes containing about 60,000 books yesterday morning into the container at the Hawaiian Electric Co. power plant near Pier 7.
With the help of friends, students, teachers, nuns, librarians, Rotarians and his parents, the Maryknoll High School senior pulled everything together.
"There's no way I could do this myself," Haeringer said.
After seeing someone on TV last fall build a library in Africa, Haeringer wanted to do something similar.
He discussed the idea with Ann Hannan, his guidance counselor at Maryknoll, who suggested helping Assumption High School, Maryknoll's sister school in Majuro. The plan evolved into his high school senior project.
In July, Haeringer journeyed with Hannan and eight classmates on a mission to Majuro where they tutored teens at Assumption in English and math.
He visited the school library, which he said was "like a dungeon, a basement with no lights and just one shelf around the room.
"That kind of motivated me to get it done," the Maryknoll senior said.
Haeringer stayed in the home of a Marshallese family. "The people are really nice, really generous even though they didn't have too much to offer," he said.
Upon returning home, Haeringer called everyone he knew for books. He e-mailed teachers at Maryknoll's grade school and high school. People responded and word spread. One teacher offered her classroom as a drop-off site, and eighth-graders would help Haeringer box the books. He brought them home and stacked them in his home's entryway and garage.
They collected textbooks and novels appropriate for high school, and children's books for Marshallese students, who speak English as a second language. Maryknoll nuns also donated items to the church in Majuro, including priest's robes and large crosses.
The books will go to the high school, and its library will be expanded to accommodate them.
The state library put Haeringer in touch with Wade McVay, a member of the Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu, which had a cache of thousands of books. McVay turned over a roomful of books to Haeringer's cause. McVay said his Rotary Club group has been collecting and shipping books all over the Pacific since 1988.
Haeringer wrote numerous letters and made lots of calls before finding a moving company and a shipping company that would donate their services.
"I think he's doing a great job," said Sakaguchi. "I think it's really going to help the people there."
Maryknoll's motto of noblesse oblige, "to whom much is given, much is expected," also influenced Haeringer.
"We have a lot here, so we should try to give to those countries that are less fortunate," he said.
