Nine-year-old Dilshi loves the library at Hedunuwewa Primary School. Ever since Room to Read launched our School Library program there three years ago, she has been a regular, having read more than 240 of its 2,600 books.
At home, the books Dilshi read allowed her to explore new ideas and places, which made her think: with school so far away, there were others in her community that could not experience such joy.
This realization, coupled with her zealous love of reading, inspired Dilshi to create her own small library at home, and she immediately got started building her inventory.
Armed with a detailed checkout log and classification system, Dilshi runs her home library with the utmost efficiency. “I checked out 11 books to my friends and family during the school vacation last December,” she says, confirming the number with a glance at her register.
“Dilshi is my good friend," says Shachini, another fifth-grader from the school. "I went to see her home library and thought it was very beautiful.”
As word of Dilshi’s home library spread, she gained more and more patrons from the surrounding area—a fact, says her librarian, that is particularly important given the district’s remote, rural setting.
“Before Room to Read and Dilshi’s library,” says the librarian, “we had to take the primary school students to another school if we wanted them to see a library full of books.”
Our team in Sri Lanka, upon seeing the effects of Dilshi’s project, awarded her with a special literacy certificate recognizing the quality of her home library.
“I’m most impressed with the records she keeps,” says the principal of her school. It’s clear that the home library project is helping Dilshi develop more than just her literacy skills.
Learn more about our School Libraries and our work in Sri Lanka.
What a great idea, and one that certainly seem to be working. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Dyslexia Lady | Feb 02, 2012 at 08:14 AM
The kids in Northern Sri Lanka are very fortunate to be able to bifenet from your vast experience and help recover from trauma of war I am looking forward to meeting you and learning more about using art as a form of therapy in a structured manner, after having used art as a medium of therapy in an amateurish way for many months in the IDP camps in north in 2009 period this was immediate post-war scenario and the art camps' we had for over 2500 children gave them an outlet for expression of many emotions and helped to make them feel cared-for and gave them hope look forward to welcoming you and the team to SL in december Manori Unambuwe
Posted by: Vicentico | May 30, 2012 at 03:49 AM