Books are our friends forever. Cultivating the reading habit is similar to seeking lifetime friends. Library start up ‘Reading Keeda’ does just that, from an early age. Set in a homely environment, surrounded by lush green trees, it houses a wide range of books, especially curated for the connoisseurs in making. Just the place that asks you to take books in minimum two languages. And who can forget the birthday slot corner that is aimed to make you remember the authors & revisit their works..? For, when you open the pages, you touch the author’s heart.
http://www.indiainput.com requested Dr. Pallavi Bapat, Founder Director, Reading Keeda library (an Initiative of Pathimba Foundation) to talk about her dream book-venture.
Here are the excerpts.
Q.: Why Reading Keeda?? What motivated you to come up with this idea?
I am myself an avid reader and always dreamt of having a personal library since my college days. I also was blessed enough to have library as an important part of my childhood. In 2014, when upon completing MBBS and after appearing for my PG entrance, I used to spend my time reading books and interacting with children around me. And it came to my notice that, children did a lot of talking and they talked about anything and everything under the sun, from movies to cricket, school to trips and so on. But, books were not in picture at all. That was a wake-up call for me and I realized what value would a personal library have, if there were no one around to read those books. Thus began the journey of Reading Keeda.
We started with a summer library in 2014, where I started with my personal collection of 100 books and I
approached kids around in the colony and asked them to contribute 1-2 books each and build up
a collection of 200 books approx.. Kids came, explored the collection, issued books and took them
home for reading. We had this library concept again in 2015 Summer and then again in 2016 Summer. These 3
summers gave us some learnings – the most important of those was to have a choicest collection
and to have the library all the year round.
So, in 2017, we began our preparation. We restarted the library in new location with 1000
books ( pre loved and new both) with an intent to continue all the year round. And since then, till
date, we continued our journey and our tryst to reach kids throughout the year. We even
managed to do this during the tough times of COVID pandemic, all because of the passion for
reading amongst our members and the dedication of our team.
Since then, Reading Keeda has been curating the collection of books and magazines at regular
intervals. We have been conducting various literary (Library treasure hunt, spell bee, creative
writing workshop, storytelling sessions, readers circle, teens book club , swap it book exchange
programme etc. ) and non-literary programmes ( movie screening, jungle stories, aeromodelling,
drawing and painting, craft, jigsaw puzzles, board games , fun fare etc. ) for various age groups to
promote holistic development of children . We have also organized interactive sessions for kids
and parents on various topics like – Understanding Good touch, bad touch; How not to be a bully;
How to talk to teens; Nutrition for children; Screen time management ; How to read a Newspaper
etc.
We have also worked in one of the slums in Nagpur – Kachipura for 22 months , from August 2021
to June 2023. There we worked with 80 kids and had developed free library centre in the
community where weekly storytelling sessions were conducted for all kids.
We have also collaborated with various organizations working with children ( Learning
Companions, Ovee Trust, Sadaya Foundation, Vardhishnu etc. ) and given them support with
regards to library resources like books and strengthening library practices in their field areas. We
look forward to working with more organizations and help them set up more libraries across the
nation.
Q : How did you both team up, old acquaintance or met for cause
Aditi Baitule Deshpande is my school friend and we share the love for reading. We were also blessed to have library as an integral part of our childhood. Aditi joined this initiative in 2017, when we decided to make this library, an all the year round initiative. Since then, there has been no looking back. Our friendship has helped us become great partners and our professional connection has made us better friends too.
Q : What obstacles did you face?
Reading Keeda Library is a passion project for me and Aditi. Hence, when we talk of obstacles, there might
have been many, but we never felt the burden of it.
One of the major challenges for us is to get human resources to work in our project. It becomes difficult
sometimes to find passionate and dedicated team members and volunteers. However, gradually, we have
now been able to set up a team of 6 people and all our operations are going smoothly at present.
Another challenge is getting monetary support. The library works on not-for-profit model and hence we
have registered as a Not-for-Profit company named Pathimba Foundation, under which this library project
is run. We get donations from crowdfunding platforms, friends, family, acquaintances. But, we have not
been able to get regular donors and corporate donations for our work . We are still working on this.
And another challenge that we face is , that we both work as full-time professionals in different fields and
manage our passion project Reading Keeda along with it. Aditi is an IT professional in Persistent Systems
and I am a Developmental Pediatrician practicing in Nagpur more than 3 years now. So, sometimes the
juggling becomes difficult, and balancing it with our family lives makes it an uphill task. But, we manage it
like a cakewalk because of the support from our families, encouragement from our employers and our
love for reading and children alike.
Q : How was the response from Nagpur readers? Who are your readers?
The response we have got from readers in Nagpur is very encouraging. Kids as young as 10 months had
joined our library and have continued to be members even at age of 5 years. We have members from
distant parts of the city like Koradi road, Beltarodi, Jaffar Nagar, Manish Nagar, Hingna etc. Our library
caters to 1- to 18-year-old children and parents too. And we are glad to share that we have even some
members between the age range 18-25 years too as they found our collection interesting . Since 2014, we
have reached more than 500 kids through our library and library programmes.
Q : Tell us about the story books home delivery feature. And, how it works…
We are starting this feature from this month only. The current plan is at a subscription fee of Rs 500/
month, in which we will share our catalogue with the member; they can select 4 books and we will deliver
it at their door step. The next exchange of books will be after 2 weeks and again 4 books will be delivered
as per the choice of the member. In total, 8 books can be read in a month’s time. This facility is only for
members living more than 4km away from our Shankar Nagar library. The ideology behind starting this
membership plan is to reach a greater number of kids in Nagpur and spread the love of reading amongst
children living in distant parts of the city.
The Reading Keeda can be contacted here:
Instagram : https://instagram.com/readingkeedalibrary
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReadingKeedaLibrary/
Library Location: https://g.co/kgs/FwCLA32
Timings : Tuesday to Sunday , 9am to 12 noon and 5pm to 8pm ; Monday closed
Call: +91 9096452663 / +91 8446163002.
