According to ASER(2018), 1 out of 2 children in India cannot read at their grade level. This is a staunch reminder that India is still a long way from ensuring inclusive & equitable quality education. With Pratham Books, Educate Girls is democratising access to books so that every child can discover the joy of reading. We are doing this by jointly setting-up 250 libraries across 250 government primary schools in Banswara district, Rajasthan to enable encourage & inculcate a habit of reading.
India produces an inadequate number of books for its 300 mn children.Moroever, there is poor access to quality reading materials in a language familiar to the child.Most children,especially from low-income backgrounds, don't have a reading environment at home & hence school libraries (often under-resourced) remain the only source of books.This project aims to enable children to enjoy invaluable physical proximity to printed books,encouraging them to read & develop emotionally & intellectually.
Guided by the scarcity of infrastructure & resources that most government & affordable private schools face,EG,along with Pratham Books will jointly set-up & distribute 25,000 books across 250 libraries in 250 government primary schools in Banswara district,Rajasthan that are currently part of the EG's learning intervention. With 100 richly illustrated children's books per library, the languages & reading levels are customized to the classroom in order to help teachers in multi-grade classrooms.
Children in Rajasthan lack the access to engaging books apart from their textbooks, and have limited reading resources available at home.By distributing & setting-up classroom libraries with more than 25,000 books in a language familiar to the children, we are hoping to inculcate a culture of reading in these schools. We believe that access to these books will improve reading habits of the children as well as encourage read-aloud or shared reading sessions in the classroom.
