Primary Functions of the Eureka Child Library

In each village, a local volunteer maintains the library (a big bag with a bunch of books) at her home. She gets about 50 kids in village together every evening and circulates the story cards and books to the children. The materials have been selected very carefully so that the books and cards themselves generate a lot of excitement. We have a large collection of very short 1-page colorful story cards that are very easy to read. Children who find reading difficult start with these simple graded cards. Then they quickly move on to more complex cards and books. We have also provided each library with a set of Tulika Books – the colorful and funny stories also attracts children to the libraries.

Supplementary Activities

Apart from reading and circulating the library books, the volunteer also regularly organizes a lot of activities for children – magic shows, games, art, origami, toy making, etc. Each library has a Children’s Club that meets every week – this makes the library an active learning center. The library also identifies children’s talents – drawing, craft, science, math, sports – and trains them on it. To expose children to different environments, we are also trying to get volunteers in Chennai to take the library kids on tours and host them for 1-2 days. Apart from activities in the village, we also organize district and state wide activities. Just recently, we ran a state wide story writing competition in which 15000 children wrote stories.