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.
