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| Picture 1: The upcoming Community Library which will contain books and computers |
The Action Center for Transformation (ACT) aims to
build a Rural Community Library & Resource Center in each village or urban
slum. The goal of such libraries is to increase literacy and cultivate a habit
of reading and writing among children. The organisation recognizes that a
non-government organization (NGO) with the aim of improving communities should not just
focus on healthcare. A holistic approach should be adopted which means covering
areas from healthcare, employment opportunities to education.
ACT works with commercial organizations to set up these
libraries in urban slums and in turn, help these companies achieve their
corporate social responsibility goals. Commercial organizations can contribute
by donating a sum of money which will go into building the library and purchasing
items needed to operate the library. The books, computers and furniture such as
computer desks and shelves are also donated by individuals and other organizations.
The library will provide books from fiction to
non-fiction, teaching materials and books for specialized examinations. It will
also have amenities such as computers so that these children will no longer
have to travel for hours to a place to acquire computer skills, a long journey
most of them cannot afford and discouraging for children to learn computer
skills.
The library in Bandhwari Village will begin in January
2013 and is supported by Interglobe Technologies. While ACT is in charge of
setting up the library, the daily operations will be run by people selected
from the village. By selecting people to run the library from the village, this
creates a sense of ownership and encourages the community to take
responsibility of the center. The library in Bandhwari Village will be run by a
librarian, who will be in charge of organizing and loaning out of the books maintaining
the computers and, an operations manager who will be overall in charge of the
place. The operations manager will also be in charge of conducting computer
lessons and the library’s accounting.
The library’s target audiences are not just the
children, numbering approximately 60 children from the very young to adolescent
youths, but the illiterate women as well. The illiterate women are under the
library’s Functional Lifelong Programme, which aims to teach these women basic
English through the use of computers. They will be taught by students who are
enrolled in the library’s computer lessons. At the same time, the library will
be a place for community classes which are currently being held in the
courtyard of a villager’s house.
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| Picture 2: A community class being held in the courtyard of a villager's house |
It is hoped that such libraries will complement the public
and private schools existing in the village and encourage the children to read beyond
the school syllabus and be exposed to a wider world of knowledge.
