Lana Lynn has had a passion for reading since she was a little girl. She grew up in a small town in South Dakota of only around 1,200 people. An avid reader, she says her local library went above and beyond to get her access to more books.

Now, she’s passing the same love on and getting books to people in Africa.

Lynn is the chairman of the board and a founder of the local nonprofit organization Elizabeth’s Library, which builds libraries and supplies books and literacy training people in poor and rural areas in African countries.

“They work through local village headmen and employ locals as national directors and employees,” said Bob Williams, who nominated Lynn. “I had the opportunity to travel with her and a small team this summer and she is most definitely a hero in my eyes and the eyes of the African people.”

Originally a nurse, Lynn was given the opportunity to work at a refugee camp on the Thailand-Cambodia border to evaluate some health training programs as part of the International Medical Corps.

“One day I’m a middle-aged lady in California and 48 hours later, I’m walking through the barbed wire surrounding a camp of 166,000 people that had been in there, that a whole generation had been born there,” Lynn said. “So, of course, that changed my entire life.”

While on the Thailand-Cambodia border, Lynn started a literacy class, something she said she has done everywhere she worked in the world. “It’s not ever been part of my job description, but it’s just something I want to do because the need is out there.”

Lynn spent a year working at the refugee camps before returning to California to finish her master’s in International Public Administration. She was recruited to do more missions in Somalia, Bosnia, Croatia, Republic of Georgia and Afghanistan, then became a subject matter expert for the U.S. military.

Lynn had the opportunity to travel the world, and one of her missions took her to Africa, in the country of Malawi where she met a rural pastor.

“I was so struck by this rural pastor and his heart to do something for his community,” she said. “He wanted, first of all, to do something like start a literacy training program for the widows of his congregation.”

As Lynn heard all of the stories the pastor had to share, her heart was touched. Lynn and her husband worked to get the literacy program set up. The pastor said his next dream was to start a school for the orphans in his community.

Instead of a traditional birthday gift, for Lynn’s 60th birthday, her friends raised money to start a school. They began sending books over to the school, and raising money to send over more books.

“One of our members was Elizabeth,” Lynn said. “Elizabeth was a young woman who was born with an inoperable brain tumor, but she was determined to keep on living and she went to school, and she was working on her teaching degree and she hoped one day to go to Africa with me and teach.”

Elizabeth died as they were getting ready to launch the fundraiser.

Lynn told the pastor in Malawi about her passing and he said if they get the library built to name it Elizabeth Library in her honor. Upon telling the story to Elizabeth’s parents, they were so touched by it that they asked that any memorial given for Elizabeth be given to build the library.

They raised enough money and got the library built.

Lynn was sent to visit several projects in Africa. As their directors learned about Lynn building the library in Malawi, “they said, you have to build libraries here, we don’t have any libraries for our people in the rural areas.

“So I had to think and pray about it for a long time because I’m old and I know how much work is involved in and doing the libraries, but I also know that these people do not have access to these kinds of resources. They just don’t,” she said. “I’m a very strong Christian and the Lord said, ‘nope, you need to do this.’”

And so she did.

Lynn met a woman in Africa named Esther, who had started a school with about 800 kids. They talked about starting a library in her school, but didn’t have the space for it. Instead, they started a library in a rural area: Susu.

“People were walking two and three hours to borrow a book and we knew we had to build something bigger,” Lynn said.

Lynn went back to her hometown of Britain, South Dakota for her 50th high school reunion and ended up having an article written about her in the local newspaper. The editor of the paper asked “so what can we do?”

Lynn asked if they wanted to help build a sister library in Zambia, “and my little town raised $4,300 for the property that we needed to buy, which cost $4,500, so we got the property.”

The land, and Elizabeth’s Library International, has served the community more than just the books. Lynn said they funded a small orange tree orchard along with some other basic agricultural things and a well.

Lynn felt her inspiration and motivation was a combination of a lot of different things.

“I’m a Christian, so I really believe that my life is in God’s hands and that he has steps that he puts in place to do something and I look back now and I think each one of these experiences led to the knowledge and the ability to run an organization that’s building libraries,” she said.

“Ever since I was a little girl and started reading, ever since I started reading about doctors and nurses and people who had gone all over the world to do these things, it was just always in my heart to do it.”

Once the opportunity arose for her, she knew she had to take it but she never dreamed it would lead to her professional career.

In the beginning, they would send books to Africa by U.S. mail, but it was very expensive. One of Lynn’s friends back in South Dakota met someone from Zambia at church. While talking to him about Elizabeth’s Library, she was introduced to Amezam, a shipping company that ships from the states to about six different African nations.

Now, they’ve been working with Amezam for four years.

At the time of the interview, Lynn was in the middle of preparing for another shipment of books, which she does out of her own home. She said they were fortunate to be able to afford shipping for about 80 boxes of books.

“The driver stops, comes into my garage, we fill out all the paperwork. He puts the boxes in the back of his truck and three months later, they show up in Zambia and Malawi.”

She said they’ve sent around 20,000 books over the past few years.

“It’s totally transformed these communities. The library is a stepping off point for community development,” she said. “The endpoint is not just the library. The library is a tool to change all these lives.”

Now, Lynn just hopes to continue doing more of the same, in more places. She knows it can be replicated and knows how to do it.

“For me, what’s the greatest thing of all is now that these kids who have some tools of learning, women who can make a living for themselves, what you’re doing is encouraging people to be all that God intended them to be. You’re giving them the tools.”