Child Rights Trust

Children's Library – A Celebration and Review

Date : 15/ 7 / 2012 Place: Ananthashayana Gudi, Hospet

Child Rights Trust with the coordination and cooperation of its networking NGO friends such as KIDS, BIRDS, Sneha, READS, DON BOSCO, Seeds and CARDS has successfully finished its one year of smooth functioning of Children's libraries. The concept of children's library “by the children, for the children, with the children” has made a mark in the communities of Dharwad and Bellary districts of Karnataka. Against this background, children in order to share their experience and opinion had gathered on 15th July 2012 at Ananthashayana Gudi, Hospet. Sixty five children were represented from ten different libraries (five children from each library)

Mr. Gundi Ramesh, State Youth Awardee; Ms.Sunitha Srinivas, Community Leader; Mr. Raghavendra, Project Coordinator and Mr. Anil, Project Assistant of CRT were the guests of the day. The programme was inaugurated by child representatives from different libraries (Ms. Shilpa, Chilipili Children's Library; Mr. Purushottham, Vishwa, Chinnara Pustaka Mane; Mr. Husain, KIDS Library; and Ms. Ambika, Nehru Library).

“In our village we had libraries only for adults but now we have our own libraries” proudly said Mr. Kiran, Member of Chilipili Library who gave the welcome speech ; Children of DON BOSCO sang a song on child rights. Later, one child representative and one librarian shared their opinion and the use of children's library in their community. Children were shown a documentary film of “Chagallatti Children's Library”.

Librarians expressed that they are going to initiate and conduct activity based works in order to strengthen the membership of the libraries and also to encourage more and more of Children's Participation. Children were given away with certificates and momentous by Mr. Ramesh. In his speech, Mr. Ramesh expressed that there is a need of rural children's library and people / parents of the community have to make use of such libraries to channelize children and to equip them with more knowledge. He also expressed that in the coming days every village and Grama Panchayats must be in a position to set-up their own children's library.

Post lunch session was facilitated by motivating children to sketch out and color their poster regarding their “Dream Library”. Children colored their posters and later prepared their action plan on how they are going to organize their library in the coming days. The programme was anchored by Ms. Shruthi, member of Chinnara library. The programme was wound up by distributing a set of books to children which carried the essence of Child rights. Totally, the whole programme was facilitated by children and backstopped by adults in terms of arranging logistics and other arrangements.

In the coming days CRT has its plan to conduct more number of workshops and trainings for the volunteers who want to establish children's library in their locality and who will contribute in terms of technical support. As a process follow-up, the coordination and monitoring of the existing libraries will continue with no changes in their system of functioning.