Reading Keeda Library

Books beyond academics are becoming a lost concept nowadays for young kids. Conversations around books and reading, especially reading for leisure and pleasure, are becoming a rare sight. Additionally, for children in urban slums especially, the break in academics because of the pandemic has been much harsher as compared to their counterparts in the city. It has affected the reading fluency and overall comprehension more severely for these kids with no remedial measures available easily financially. Also, because of the economic disparity that the urban slum kids have to live with and the fact that most of them are first or second-generation readers in their families, awareness is missing about the benefits of reading outside of academics. Screen time has become the biggest competitor to books, because of its easy accessibility and availability over books. The overall accessibility, availability and awareness about reading is a problem that we at Reading Keeda (an initiative of Pathimba Foundation) are working on.

Reading Keeda Library runs at two locations in Nagpur - Shankar Nagar, one of the central hub areas of the city, and Kachipura, an urban slum. At both of our centres, we actively engage the kids through various fun and learning activities, sessions and workshops. By running our Kachipura library as a free centre, we ensure that any kid in Kachipura can access the books that are available to them beyond any borders. We also hold informal conversation spaces in our libraries so that kids can feel safe to discuss anything that they feel curious, or doubtful about. Across these two centres, we host around 5000 books, in English, Marathi and Hindi and cater to around 150 kids. Over the last 8 years, cumulatively we have reached around 350+ kids by way of our various sessions, quizzes, and collaborations with schools and other NGOs. Besides these two centres, we run an online Teens' Book Club which is open to all teenagers. We have had participation from kids from cities like Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Jaipur, Trivandrum, Nagpur, Amravati and even Amsterdam. Our Teens' Book Club are also marked by engagement activities and also Dialog Circles to encourage kids to deep dive into various topics.

Through the work, we do for kids across strata and geographical locations, we aim to nurture holistic development of kids - improve their comprehension, and reading fluency and also develop their critical thinking. We aim to build a network of young readers who can converse, assert and debate their thoughts with their peers. With our community outreach program, we strive to expand the borders of imagination, and creativity and also instil confidence in these kids by presenting to them that they have as equal an opportunity to access books and enjoy reading as any other child. By collaborating with other early-stage libraries, schools, and NGOs working in the education sector and helping them build and set up libraries in their spaces, we are increasing our reach and taking our vision to even more kids. Overall, Reading Keeda aims to not just remain a library limited to books and literary activities, but which take books and reading outside of its 4 walls and makes it accessible to all those kids who need it, as easily as any other essential commodity.