Navajo honors student imagines food trucks as mobile libraries

TEMPE, Ariz. – Elijah Allan, an Arizona State University honors college student from the Navajo Nation, envisions food trucks as mobile libraries.

He and two other enterprising ASU students want to harness the food truck craze with their plan to convert old trucks into modern-day bookmobiles for low-income schools and communities lacking basic library resources. They hatched the idea as part of their “Changemaking in Education” course co-taught by ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and Teach For America.

“I have a big passion for education, especially Indian education issues happening back in my Navajo Nation homeland,” said Allan, a conservation biology and ecology major minoring in American Indian studies. “The thing that most attracted me to this course was that you could apply for an ASU Innovation Challenge grant and possibly get funding for your idea.”

“We wanted to build our library on a food truck platform to fit in with the whole food truck movement,” he explained. “Our concept was to take a used food truck and renovate it to fit our mobile library idea.”

Allan’s student group recently passed the first hurdle to receive the ASU grant funding. Last week, Allan appeared on the Arizona PBS public affairs program, “Horizonte,” to discuss the project. Click here for video. The students also have applied for funds from the Clinton Global Initiative University being hosted by former President Bill Clinton at ASU, March 21-23, 2014.