Ernesto Jimenez

Peruvian social entrepreneur who revolutionized rural education through mobile libraries

Ernesto Jimenez (b.1972) transformed education access in Peru's Andean highlands through his Móvilibros initiative launched in 1999. Growing up in a Quechua-speaking village without schools, Jimenez recognized the critical gap in educational resources for rural children. His breakthrough came when he designed a system of repurposed school buses converted into mobile libraries, each carrying 5,000+ books in multiple languages and equipped with solar-powered digital tablets.

By 2005, Móvilibros' fleet of 15 vehicles served over 300 remote communities, reaching 120,000 students annually. Jimenez pioneered a bilingual education model combining Quechua and Spanish, which became the basis for Peru's national education policy reforms in 2006. His work was honored with the Open Society Foundations Award in 2008. A 2012 documentary 'Los Libros que Caminan' chronicled the program's impact, showing literacy rates increasing from 38% to 89% in participating villages.