With an aim to teach
rural children, and cultivate a reading habbit among them, a team of Mumbai and
Pune-based college students have came up with an initiative - One village, one
library.
According to the members of this team called Eklavya, the initiative will
help educate rural children.
The concept was conceptualised by the team while
participating in the ‘Transform Maharashtra' project oragnised by the state
government to provide opportunities for young college students from the state
to come up with a programme to provide solutions to the challenges faced by the
state currently. The government announced that the initiative - One village,
one library - won the Popular Choice award on May 1 at a ceremony in Mumbai.
Before conceptualising the initiative, the students carried out a survey in
nearby tribal villages of Pune, and Yavatmal district.
Speaking about the survey, Raju Kendre, 24, a student at the
Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Tuljapur campus said, “According to
the survey carried out by us we found out that the basic necessity for the
children in tribal villages is library where they can spend time to read and
learn. A few villages have funds for libraries on paper but nothing is been
used. There are hardly any books, and poor infrastructure in the libraries. By
building this concept, we want to set up four to five libraries in different
villages on our own and make the initiative a working model for every village
in the state.” The first few libraries will be set up in Amravati, Pune,
andYavatmal districts through crowdfunding. According to Pravin Nikam, a team
member, “We will start crowdfunding for the libraries in rural villages soon.
We will later take help from corporate funds through CSR activities to extend
the initiative. While we will be focusing on storytelling, history, civic
studies for children below the age group of 18, career building and UPSC books
will be available for children above 18 yearsof age.”
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