You know that feeling when you walk into a place you helped build and find it not just standing, but thriving? That was us on July 3rd, 2025, showing up at Precious Blood High School, one of KEY’s earliest partner schools, and walking into a library we helped set up back in 2010. Sixteen years later, the place looked fantastic. Well-loved, much-used, and clearly cared-for. The kind of thing that makes you feel every bit of effort put in was worth it. Reading isn’t just an activity here. It’s part of the school’s DNA, something KEY helped build when we first came in and transformed the space from a homework room into a proper, modern library. The school has run with it ever since.
But we weren’t just there to reminisce. We had boxes with us. Sealed, heavy, full of promise, thanks to our exciting new partnership with Book Aid International. And the teacher librarian and her crack team of library prefects? They’d been waiting.
The second we said go ahead and open them, the whole room changed. Quiet library? Not a chance. Students were pulling out books, holding them up, calling friends over. “Look at this one!” A few were already stacking up personal piles of must-reads. And some? They just sat down right there, mid-unboxing, and started reading. Couldn’t even wait for the cardboard to be cleared.
It was also really lovely to see how beautifully the library has been looked after all these years. That kind of care doesn’t happen by accident. It says everything about the school and the pride the students and staff take in the space.
This is the stuff that keeps us going. When you put the right book in front of a young person, something clicks. They get curious. They get confident. They start asking questions nobody expected.
We can’t wait to get back to Precious Blood and find out which book became someone’s favourite, which one started an argument at lunch, and which one a student just won’t give back.