Root cause

“With a motive to inculcate reading culture and help rural children develop their personalities,we started this project of equipping the schools with libraries approximately a year ago. The story starts right from the formation of the word- Gyan Key. It is an amalgamation of two words one an English word and the other a Sanskrit one. The meaning of the combined word is nothing but a key to knowledge,” says Lokhande.

A public participation project,the initiative involves donors,publishers and a village that meets the criterion of having a secondary school. With an average of 250 students per school,the libraries till date are availed by over 35,000 children from villages in remote parts of Amravati,Jalgaon,Ratnagiri and other districts of Maharashtra. “With a motive to maintain transparency,we ask the donors to pay the money directly to our publishers who issue a set of books in the name of the school. Setting up the library and ensuring efficient operation of the setup is our responsibility,” says Lokhande.

Hobby or necessity,reading is associated closely with one’s liking and when Lokhande and his team sat down to work on the book list,they finalised on one book per topic that made up to over 160 books in one library. “Limiting school children to particular topic is an injustice to their thought process that has the capacity to grow in multiple folds. We thus short listed topics such as music,drama,astrology,science as a part of this set,” adds Lokhande.

This set,is then installed in the village school and the children are given ownership of the library. “One girl per school is then appointed as the Gyan Key monitor and while m anaging the administration of the library,she also coordinates constantly with the donors of the library and with us thus keeping the operation transparent as well as efficient,” smiles Lokhande.

“We have 182 books in our library that was established last year. We added 100 more from the already existing library in our school and made them 282. I issue books to students on every Saturday and Wednesday and ensure that they return them within two- three days in the same condition,” says Jayashree who is also a Gyan Key monitor.