Foundation’s novel drive to keep reading habit moving

The foundation is the brain child of Madan Mohan (46), a former corporate employee, who resigned his job to serve the affected during the 2004 tsunami attack.

Madan in his initial days started a free school that has successfully completed 20 years and has around 200 plus students enrolled. It was only after a few years of starting the school, the idea of a mobile library struck him, “Reading is connected to the behaviour of a child and it won’t die out,” Madan told DT Next.

Madan said that in 2008, they started delivering books to schools on a two-wheeler and in 2012, Madan had spent Rs 4.50 lakh to buy a new mini lorry for converting it into a mobile library with book shelves.

Till 2015 Madan had faced hurdles to enter a government school, “However, a school headmaster who shared the same though of increasing reading habit among children accepted to try the ‘experiment’ in his institution near Tiruvannamalai. When the experiment turned out into a success with more children willing to read, soon 18 schools welcomed us,” he said. The mobile library reaches the schools once in a fortnight and each student is allowed to borrow two books. The names of children are registered and the books are barcoded. “I ensure that they develop an all-round reading culture by providing different topics (culture, history) during each visit,” he added.

“This has resulted in 1,600 students reading 10,000 books nearly 20,050 times in 2018-19 with another 1,000 books being purchased for the next year,” he added.

He said, “The children are responsible as we lost only 42 books last year out of which 32 books were paid for by students themselves. However, we never stop giving them books.”