Tomas Ryan - Founder

Follow @tomaskryan

with uncle

I have traveled all over the world, mostly to climb mountains. I can say the only place I really feel home is when I am in some remote area. Through all these adventures, my interest shifted from just climbing mountains to actually getting to know other cultures and people. Travelling for one month in the Maoist controlled Nepal with four Nepalese made a huge impact on me. Climbing became a way to explore other cultures, meet interesting people and get to understand and feel their struggle.

With this project, I hope we can provide better opportunities to others. The adventure of our lives gets a great start from access to quality information such as books and the Internet. Small community libraries are providing access to such information in the poorest places. All those libraries are local initiatives and are managed by residents of the community. Let's simply encourage them by facilitating their survival. A well furnished library attracts more people and that makes it successful. Those libraries are highly beneficial to everyone, especially the children.

Denise, celebrating the proposed new location for the library.

Well, what can we say about Denise... All this here can definitely be blamed on her. Denise and my mom went to college together, and that is a long time ago. In the last few years she unsuccessfully tried to get me involved in her library project. It took until August 2013 for me to step on the soil of Kenya, and here we are today.

Denise comes with a huge background of information from her university career, lifelong reading, and most importantly her experience in library support. She has built a network of reliable and trustworthy individuals, which are now deeply involved in this project. Denise is regularly consulted on a wide range of topics from daily library activities to proposal and grant writing.

Denise resides in Hanover, Massachusetts.

Harrison Kilonzo - Library operations: setting priorities and allocating library supplies.

Harrison is also the Director and founder of the Denise C. Hogan Library in Kenya. He founded this library 18 years ago, and has been the driving force behind this institution with the support of Dr. Denise Hogan. Harrison has an incredible amount of experience managing, running, and dealing with all aspects of libraries. He is, by far, our most experienced team member. He currently resides just outside Nairobi with his wife and children.

Harrison was educated in the United States where he spent a total of five years. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Maine at Presque Isle.