Rural Children's Libraries

In the period April 2011 to December 2012, various children's rural library activities were carried out in some villages of Karnataka 's Bellary and Dharwad districts.

Each library over 1,700 books in English and Kannada, covering a wide variety of genres including fiction, non-fiction and reference books. The books are graded and  color as per the reading capacities of the children using GROW BY READING standards. The books are issued to readers/children as per their grade and are facilitated to graduate to higher grades.

All the libraries that have been started are working well and slowly succeeding in seeking the attention of the children. Nearly 30-40 children have become members in each library. Children of these rural libraries are participating very actively and showing improvement in their reading capacity and other non-curricular activities. Parents of these children are appreciating this kind of library.

These libraries are functioning about 2-3 days in a week. Once in three months, these libraries are updating the reports and recording the reading level of each student. As revealed in the attached account statement, Frequently, teammates of CRT visits these libraries to get an understanding of the implementation of the libraries and the feedback that we have received is that the libraries have geared up their functioning and are attracting more children to the libraries.

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 in these districts. 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. We have found such enthusiasm from local donors and children, that some of the expenses have been borne by them and we have had savings in the expenditures budgeted originally as part of this project. Also, one school has been inspired by our open library in the area to allow its children free access to its library, as against the usual rigid closed school library.

Against this background, children had gathered on 15th July 2012 at Ananthashayana Gudi, Hospet in order to share their experience and opinions. Sixty five children were present from ten different libraries (five children from each library).

CRT is getting feedback that other NGOs are interested to initiate and implement Rural children's Library in their working areas. Another donor has funded CRT to initiate some in Chamrajanagar district, where we are working along with Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and some local NGOs.So we would like to initiate some more libraries in other districts

A sense of what Rural Children''s Libraries are about can be seen by the video showcasing our award winning Chaglatti Library on Youtube [search for Chaglatti].

We are looking forward to more support to extend our project in the days to come.