In 1990, Jim Ziolkowski embarked on a backpacking trip around the world. He trekked through dozens of countries, but one encounter in a tiny village in the mountains of Nepal left a particularly deep impression on him. Villagers were celebrating the opening of a schoolhouse they had built with the help of a group of British mountaineers.

"This was an entirely new concept to me, something that you’re unlikely to find in the United States," Jim recalls. "At first I couldn’t understand why these kids were so excited about a new school. Then I realized that their parents had built it so that their children could have the education they did not."

When he returned home, Jim took a job with GE Capital as a member of the Financial Management Program, but his thoughts kept returning to the Nepalese village. A few months into the program, Jim and his brother Dave came up with the idea to start an organization dedicated to building schoolhouses in developing countries while enhancing education for students in the U.S. The desire to create Building with Books became so strong that Jim eventually left GE Capital in 1992 to focus full-time on starting the organization.

"The first year was the most critical and challenging," Jim recalls. "Our goal was to build the first BwB school ten months from the day I left GE Capital. This seemed very ambitious since we’d never built a school, were only learning how to raise the funds needed to build and had not yet visited two of the three countries where we would work."

The two brothers and co-founders had only a few hundred dollars in the bank. They established important partnerships with international organizations like Save the Children and identified potential supporters and sponsors. They also began to recruit a volunteer base, which included fellow Michigan native Marc Friedman, who would eventually become BwB’s Chief Operating Officer.

Despite the support of volunteers and a very small donor base, the road ahead was daunting. People in Misomali, a remote village in Malawi (southern Africa), were already expecting BwB to build a school. BwB had been working with representatives of Habitat for Humanity in that country to identify a candidate community, but plans were far from final, or so BwB thought. One day, a fax arrived in Stamford saying that Habitat representatives had announced to the village that BwB would be coming to build a school, and villagers immediately broke into celebration. They were expecting the school within six months of the day that fax was sent. BwB had less than $500 in the bank. The pressure was on.

"We were a group of young people trying to change the world. We had a vision, but lacked the resources and experience," Jim said. "The only thing I knew for certain was that we shared a common purpose."

To fulfill its domestic mission, BwB set out to start after-school programs in U.S. high schools. Jim presented the program to his alma mater, Lumen Christi High School in Michigan, and to Mahopec High School in Putnam County, New York in the spring of 1992.

"I was very nervous about pitching the idea of BwB programs to so many students," Jim said. "This was a new concept for a program, and they had the power to shoot it down."

Students at Jim’s alma mater did not shoot the idea down. On the contrary, out of the 600 students he pitched to, 120 signed up for the first-ever BwB program, and the program is still going strong today.

In the summer of 1992, Jim embarked on a series of encounters that would change the future of BwB. Jim met with GE Capital CFO Jim Parke to explain the BwB mission and to seek financial support. Parke was intrigued by the concept of BwB and by Jim’s eagerness and offered his support. He took Jim to meet with the chairman of the GE Foundation. Then a volunteer introduced Jim to Joe Dionne, then President, Chairman and CEO of the McGraw-Hill Companies. Dionne challenged the team to further develop the vision for BwB and began his extensive support of the effort.

By the fall, things looked more promising and BwB moved out of Dave’s kitchen and into office space donated by GE Capital. Still, funding was the chief concern, with the scheduled start of the first school—in Brazil—just three months away. Dave came up with the idea to hold a benefit at the Rich Forum in Stamford, Connecticut, the first of what would later become the annual Global Gala. The organization invested all of its funds and needed to get 100 people to attend just to break even. The day before the event, the group had only 40 people committed to attend.

"That was one of many desperate moments for us back then," Jim recalls.

More than 300 people showed up at the benefit and BwB netted $17,000. That money was followed by $35,000 grants from GE Capital and McGraw-Hill. For the first time, concerns about the organization’s immediate future and the ability to build the first schools began to recede.

Marc Friedman was instrumental from the onset of his involvement, supporting the fundraising effort and helping to establish a group of volunteers. On the heels of the first Global Gala event, the volunteers organized BwB’s first annual golf tournament in 1993.

"I was very impressed with everyone’s grassroots mentality and their motivation to build schools and see results," Marc recalls. "At the height of things, we had 70 volunteers."

Indeed, BwB was still a 100-percent volunteer organization until the mid-1990s. About this time, BwB brought on its first project coordinator, Bissy Leighton, to help communities build their schools overseas. Starting with Bolgaun (Nepal) in 1996, project coordinators would remain on-site for the length of the project and then return to the US to share their experience by giving slide presentations to high school students at BwB schools.

The original BwB mission envisioned building three schools on three continents. Jim, Dave, and friend Eric Dorf were on site for the first three projects, working alongside the villagers to build the schools, while Marc provided support back in the U.S as a volunteer. The first school was completed in Brazil in June 1993 after six months of work.

The second school—completed in Malawi in December 1993—was extremely difficult on many levels. Jim recalls how Dave and Eric contracted near-fatal cases of malaria. Despite facing all of this adversity, the team never gave up.

"We were making a positive difference in people’s lives, and we couldn’t walk away," Jim said. "We felt a sense of responsibility."

In the initial projects, Jim, Dave and Eric began to lay the foundation for BwB’s self-help methodology. If the mission was to enable villagers to become self-reliant through education, that self-reliance should begin with their help in building the school, Jim recalls. BwB supplied the materials and paid the skilled laborer, while the villagers donated the unskilled labor in the form of 20 workers per day, ten men and ten women. This methodology was fully implemented in the construction of the third schoolhouse, completed in the village of Hau Pur (Nepal) in May 1994.

With the success of the first three projects and the participation of the first U.S. schools on the program, it soon became clear that BwB would be building more than just three schools. With help from key supporters, volunteers and staff, BwB would build more and more schools with each passing year. The fifth school was built in 1995, the tenth in 1997 and the 25^th in 1999. Over the years, BwB would expand its programs to eight countries on four continents and complete its 50^th school in 2001.

While building schools, BwB began to shoot video on topics relevant to U.S. high school global studies curriculum. The first video, Into the Amazon, was shot in Brazil and focused on deforestation. This video was produced in 1993, and was followed the same year by Shadows of Apartheid, a look at South Africa in the final year of the brutal Apartheid regime. Many more videos followed, some based on exclusive interviews Jim conducted with notable figures like Mother Theresa (1996), the Dalai Lama (1997), and Colin Powell (1998). Students in BwB after-school programs provided the questions for these interviews.

In 1997, BwB invested in a satellite telephone, a solar panel and a laptop computer and brought the equipment to its project site. There, a project coordinator used the technology to link students from the village with students back in the US in BwB programs. The email exchange gave students a chance to communicate across thousands of miles and over considerable cultural barriers, bringing them a little bit closer.

Mirroring its international expansion, BwB’s domestic programs grew steadily every year since it started at Lumen Christi High School. The program added its first school in New York City, Morris High School in the Bronx, in 1993. In the 2001-2002 school year, 28 schools hosted programs. BwB opened offices in Michigan (2000) and California (2001) and began plans to continue domestic expansion.

In the spring of 1999, BwB had its first-ever Trek for Knowledge, which took students and teachers from BwB programs to Nepal to help build a school, live with Nepalese families and learn about the local culture. Treks to Ladakh (India), Mali and Bolivia followed.

In the fall of 1999, BwB student program officers came together for the first Leadership Weekend. Following on the BwB theme of youth leadership development, the Social Action and Integrated Leadership Skills (SAILS) program empowered students to team up as a crew of an 80-foot schooner on Long Island Sound in the summer of 2001.

BwB programs also began participating in student exchanges, in which students from BwB programs in urban schools spend a day shadowing program members in suburban schools and vice-versa. This program helped to hammer home one of BwB’s core goals: cultural education. program members have an opportunity to break down cultural barriers domestically as well as internationally. The exchanges occur at the level of community service as well as students from different schools teamed up to improve their neighborhoods.

Other initiatives included establishing an online membership model, allowing students in cities without a BwB presence to participate in BwB activities.

From 2002 to 2007, BwB has made incredible strides to empower and educate more youth in the U.S. and around the world.

By the end of 2004, there were programs in 64 high schools in Connecticut, Detroit, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia and San Francisco. A new Chicago office established programs in local high schools in 2005.

By 2004, BwB had built 125 schools in nine developing countries enrolling more than 50,000 students worldwide.

Support for BwB expanded as well. With donor and volunteer support in California, Chicago, and Connecticut, four annual events raised a significant portion of funding for BwB programs. A diverse Board of Directors, Board of Advisors and Global Leadership Council guide BwB staff as they implemented bold plans for expansion.

By the end of 2007, BwB had completed building its 232nd school overseas. Domestically, with 18 new schools on board for the 2007-08 school year, BwB now runs programs in 108 American high schools. More than 10,000 students have participated in BwB programs since 1991, contributing more than 300,000 volunteer service hours. More than 500 students have gone on a Trek for Knowledge to assist building a school at a BwB international project site and learn about other cultures.

The organization has grown as well, with more than 60 staff members in offices in six U.S. cities and five developing countries.

In early 2008, BwB expanded its reach internationally by starting construction on the organization's first schools in Senegal on Africa's west coast. Through a partnership with Millennium Promise, BwB will build twelve much-needed schools in Senegal in 2008.

In February 2008, BwB led U.S. student members on the inaugrual "Trek for Knowledge" to Malawai, in Africa's southeastern region. While BwB has built 23 schools in Malawi, this was the first time high school students have been able to travel to the country to help build a school side by side with the villagers.

BwB started when a few volunteers came together behind a common goal. Almost seventeen years later, BwB is still motivated by the mission to motivate people in the US and around the world to make a difference.

"It’s not one of those programs where you sit in a meeting room," said Megan Carmody, program president at Lumen Christi High School. "I feel like I’ve actually done something. I’ve gone out and changed the world."