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The Economic Times |
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Library movement gets a lifeline in Pune |
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- Gouri Agtey Athale PUNE |
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AN EXTENSION from getting people to donate personal computers to village schools is to get them to donate a library, specially when all it costs is Rs 5,000. The only condition is that the donation has to be in the name of a woman and the library will be monitored by a school girl.
"Our target is to open a library on the basis of a single donation every other day. We began in November and so far have libraries in 14 village schools across the state," said Rural Relations' founder, Pradeep Lokhande. The organisation is a 15-year old marketing company with a presence in 11 states.
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The Rs 5,000 donation allows the authority to buy 180 books actually worth Rs 7,000, thanks to discounts. Under the Gyan-Key (the key to opening up a world of learning) project, a list of books is given to the prospective donor, indicating the range of subjects and genres. "On an average, schools work 200 days every year so 180 books, which form a substantial collection, do go around the school. Moreover, students in a village school come from surrounding hamlets and this means that the books go really far in terms of the audience being reached," Mr Lokhande said. |
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Having started off with the idea of getting people to donate computers to village schools, Mr Lokhande said the focus is on the secondary school student, the 11-18 year old.
"The Gyan-key library has been set up to create a fondness for reading especially since communication skills are reducing through television watching which is a one-way communication. Children have to be shown there is a lot they can learn through reading non-curriculum books," Mr Lokhande said. The scheme has received a 'global' response, with donors sending off their drafts from as far away as New Zealand and the US. Although the scheme will not turn down individual book donations, he said. |
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"People donating a book or two is not going to be enough. The donation of this sum means that students get a substantial number of books, enough to build a library in one go," he added.
Mr Lokhande is tying in several of his projects into this one. He is hoping to instil self-confidence among girl students by making them monitors of the library, while building a relationship with an urban woman, the donor. Moreover, under the ongoing Non-Resident Villager (NRV) project, which assumes that everyone comes from a village howsoever long ago, an NRV can donate such a library to the village of her choice.
For donors like Vinayak Raskar, who owns an advertising agency in Pune, donating Rs 5,000 is not a very large sum, which he has given in the name of his mother, Shakuntala Raskar. "In a village, the ratio is 1:10, which means that if one child reads a book, he discusses it with 10 other people," Mr Raskar said. For him, as for other donors, it is word of mouth publicity, since other friends have donated after hearing of his donation. |
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