Together, they opened the center on a rainy Saturday. The ribbon was made of twine; the crowd was small but fierce. Children ran between folding tables—one with donated books, another with a woman teaching knitting, a corner with small pots where kids painted faces on terracotta. On a table near the door lay a ledger where people wrote what they needed and what they could give: a pair of glasses, an hour of tutoring, a loaf of bread. The ledger’s first entry, handwritten in a careful, looping script, read: “RJ01296782 — for those who keep working when no one’s watching.”