District panchayat president V.K. Madhu inaugurated a collection centre at the district panchayat headquarters at Pattom to collect books for setting up classroom libraries in all schools in the district.
‘Sarga Vayana Sampoorna Vayana,’ a project of the district panchayat, will create class libraries for each classroom from classes 1 to 12 in the 988 State schools in the district and conduct reading-related programmes to foster reading habit among children.
Over 5 lakh already
As many as 5.78 lakh students and children are taking part in the drive.
Though the drive, which began on November 1, initially targeted to collect 5 lakh books, the actual collection has exceeded that, and the district panchayat is now eyeing the 10 lakh figure.
The district panchayat president urged the public, voluntary organisations, residents’ associations, libraries, and clubs to donate books for the campaign.
The project aims at facilitating arrangements at the school level to keep books safe, use the resources of local libraries for the students’ education, ensure public support for students’ reading, and equipping teachers to ready class libraries to get students to read more and lead them towards independent reading.
Through the project, the district panchayat aims at transforming Thiruvananthapuram into the first district with libraries in all classrooms.
Training
Teachers and students are being trained for successfully implementing the project.
A one-day training, with the theme ‘Reading excellence, academic excellence – class libraries for all schools,’ was inaugurated by district panchayat Education standing committee chairperson V. Renjith.
