and Community Literacy Coalitions When Margaret Doughty asked
about the progress of Books for the Border in Eagle Pass last
fall, I told her the story. After spending more than a year
telling people about the home library concept, my church in Fort
Worth (Western Hills Baptist) brought twenty-five small wooden
book cases to Eagle Pass in March of 2008. The idea was simple:
provide families who live in poverty a place to keep books as
well as the beginnings of a home library. Why Eagle Pass? Eagle
Pass is the seat of government for Maverick County. Like
adjoining Dimmit and Zavala Counties, this rural county is one
of the seven poorest in Texas. Add Hidalgo, Together for Hope
Presidio, Starr and Willacy and you’ve got the Texas focus of a
national community development on the twenty poorest counties in
the country. is a twenty-year effort to get those twenty
counties off that list. That’s what got me to Eagle Pass in 2007
– looking for a way to connect a literacy project with a larger
community development pro