A Hyderabad organisation has helped establish 600 libraries across India.
The target? A thousand libraries by 2025
Storybooks for children are immediately accepted since several Government schools need them. The Foundation does not accept text books and those pertaining to religion
“We help connect idle books to hungry minds,” reads a statement on the website of Hyderabadbased Food4Thought Foundation (food4thoughtfoundation.org). Formed in 2015 as a bridge connecting individuals who want to donate books idling on their shelves and educational institutions and others seeking books to open a small library, the organisation has helped set up 622 libraries across India. Their goal is to establish 1,001 libraries by 2025. “Initially, we were contacting people and telling them about the need for libraries. Today, we get nearly 20 inquiries daily,” says Madhavi, one of the cofounders and director.
The libraries they have helped set up are at Government schools, hospitals, parks, gated communities and prisons. While cities such as Hyderabad and Bengaluru have been proactive, there has been increased interest from Northeastern States and Gujarat, says Madhavi. So far, the Foundation has helped set up 250 libraries in Bengaluru, 135 in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and 55 in the Northeast.
The multipronged activities include setting up and monitoring libraries, guiding teachers and volunteers for the upkeep of the library, cataloguing and barcoding the books to help donors track their books, encouraging reading habits through events such as reading Olympiads, storytelling sessions and quiz programmes, and building a digital catalogue of folk stories through podcasts.
Where does your book go?
When approached by individuals who want to donate books, the Foundation asks for the titles. “If they are children’s storybooks, we accept them immediately since several Government schools need them. If the books are fiction or nonfiction for adults, we identify appropriate libraries. We also talk to individuals keen on opening small libraries before accepting the books,” Madhavi explains. The Foundation does not accept textbooks or religious books.
Several requests also come from schools in farflung areas and the Foundation maps the students’ reading profile — level of ease with reading and languages — and then collates and ships 250 books. Madhavi explains, “We segregate books into levels one, two, three and four based on the reading difficulty. If the request is primarily for level one, we include 25 books from levels two and three so that at least some students will be motivated to go to the next level once they grasp the level one book.”
Small libraries have also been set up in outpatient departments of a few hospitals in Hyderabad, at the request of doctors. Libraries have also been set up at panchayat levels in villages, cafes in urban areas and a few prisons (Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Majuli and Nagaon). “If we know that someone will maintain the library, we help them set it up,” says Madhavi.
Are the books being used?
Setting up a library is the first step. For schools, a teacher is trained to maintain the library, encouraged to conduct two library classes per month and incentivised for the effort. On a dedicated app, the teacher logs in details of the library classes with audio and video recordings.
Establishing a library, monitoring it, paying courier charges for the books and holding periodic competitions to motivate children with gifts for the winners costs money and that, says Food4Thought Foundation, prompted them to look for corporates and individuals to adopt libraries. At this year’s Hyderabad Literary Festival in January, the Foundation put up a stall with a focus on adopting libraries.
While corporates are still warming up to this activity in Hyderabad, there’s been a good response in Bengaluru, says Madhavi. “An initial investment of ₹25,000 and an annual sum of ₹11,000 is charged to keep these school libraries running.”
Incentive to read
The Foundation has also been helping conduct reading activities. The Reading Olympiad, for example, is a contest that tests the reading skills of students from schools in different regions. A new initiative called Reading Decathlon works as a quiz.
Besides libraries and reading initiatives, the Foundation has been recording lesserknown indigenous stories, both oral and written folklore, as podcasts.
In the first phase, 501 stories in eight languages were recorded and are now available on their YouTube channel (Food4Thought Foundation). Most of these audio stories are of two to threeminute duration.
Plans are on to record another 500 in 11 languages by December 2024. The Foundation hopes that all these initiatives help spark a reading revolution.