Stamping Before Giving

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8000 new references books for our libraries

As with so many aspects of this project, I am privileged to be associated with the work of our volunteers. In subsequent conversations with workshop participants I found uniform enthusiasm. Most surprising was strong endorsement by Sayadaws in monasteries housing and educating cyclone orphans in Bogalay. Buddhist monks normally teach through memorizing techniques, as they have learned for 2500 years; yet these prestigious senior pongyis are eager for added workshops so more of their young teachers, both women and monks, can participate.

We are pleading with the the Holmes to return this year to carry on as many workshops as possible. They can transform early reading methods in libraries and schools throughout Myanmar. This is a historic moment when the society is unusually open to scientific and technological progress, more-so than any time in the 55 years I’ve been involved. With any luck, this teaching method will significantly help civil society sustain itself.

http://www.opportunityfoundation.org/ofblog/

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4579

India’s Hippocampus Writes a New Chapter for Children’s Libraries

Published: March 24, 2011 in India Knowledge@Wharton

In 1998, Umesh Malhotra, then an employee of Infosys Technologies, did a year-long consulting stint in the United States. He lived in the Bay Area of California with his wife and then-five year old son. The book-loving couple was drawn to the local public library; in particular, they liked the children’s section which, besides being well-stocked with books, had a variety of activities for kids. When the Malhotras returned to India, they searched Bangalore in vain for the equivalent of that cheerful space.

Public libraries in India are not known for their user-friendliness. Bibliophiles either buy books or visit private lending libraries that function as rental stores for periodicals and paperbacks. Space is costly, and reading rooms are rarely part of the setup. School libraries, where they exist, are a hodgepodge of donated books, the majority of them related to academics. There is a museum-like quality to the best of them: expensive editions of books are on display, but under lock and key.

Malhotra decided it was time to take another approach. He drew up a business plan for a new kind of children’s library, which would compete with videogames, television cartoons and other digital distractions for a city kid’s free time. The library was named Hippocampus for the part of the brain that governs learning and memory formation. That title nicely shortens to hippo (as in hippopotamus), and a purple, grinning cartoon of the animal became the organization’s logo.

Mom-and-pop libraries are not uncommon in urban India, renting mostly popular fiction, comics, movies and magazines. But a privately-owned, for-profit library specifically geared toward children is a novel concept in India — and elsewhere, according to Malhotra. In 1999, Malhotra co-founded a company called Bangalore Labs with funding from ICICI Venture. This was one of the first companies in India to offer IT infrastructure managed services. Malhotra sold his stake in 2002. With adequate funds in hand, this engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras started Hippocampus.

Offering a New Experience

Detractors said Hippocampus was a good idea whose time had come — and gone. “Kids don’t read anymore,” they told Malhotra. But he thought differently; perhaps children just didn’t have access to the right opportunities or environment. In March 2003, the first Hippocampus opened in Koramangala, a newly-developed suburb of Bangalore dotted with upscale homes, including that of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani.

Marketed as an “experience center,” Hippocampus houses an extensive collection of titles and has a changing roster of weekend activities, holiday workshops and special events to keep young patrons coming back. There are beanbag chairs for lounging, a leafy backyard for the extra-energetic to tear around in, and a multimedia room to screen educational films. “An initiative like this is huge though it seems like a drop in the ocean,” notes Sandhya Rao, editor of Tulika, a bilingual children’s publishing house in India. “More children can become readers if they have access to books in a sunny environment.” The workshops and changing roster of events are important because “there is constant need to reinvent the ways of engagement,” says Mumbai-based Abhishek Chandan, head of a new British Council Library initiative. “Exposure [to], and the inclination to appreciate, creativity, arts [and] literature are more essential attributes now than ever before in the turbulent world we live in.”

Unlike most lending libraries, which charge a check-out fee for individual titles, the Hippocampus Children’s Experience Center (HCC) offers flat membership rates in a variety of different packages. The packages allow users to borrow different numbers of books and multimedia items, and range from a six-month membership fee of approximately US$41 to US$80. Members also have to pay a one-time registration fee of approximately US$11 and a refundable deposit between US$22 and US$55. In 2005, Malhotra moved beyond Bangalore and opened a HCC in Chennai. Membership across the two centers is currently around a few thousand, and has grown by word of mouth.

Malhotra declined to talk bottom-line or topline numbers. Given the membership fees, they can’t be particularly high. “Our operating cash flow was positive from day one,” he says. “[But] it took us 18 months to be profitable, as accountants see it.”

Community Initiative

If profits had been the main objective, the venture may have taken a different route. But Malhotra’s aim was to replicate his son’s experience at an American library for kids who had never had a glimpse of that world. Knowing that Malhotra did not want to run “just another business,” a contact suggested a visit to an orphanage in a nearby slum in Bangalore to see if the children there were in need of a library. They were. So Hippocampus set one up for them, donating the books.

But a month later, the collection sat on the shelves, gathering dust. “Children don’t want to read,” Malhotra was told. While this was disappointing, he took heart from survey reports, which revealed that young children from the poorest of slums were interested in picture books. In the hope of making an impact on the larger system, Malhotra went directly to government schools that served slum children. Such establishments often have indifferent teachers and lack basic amenities like classroom furniture and clean toilets. Yet, some headmasters agreed that a working library was a good resource and wanted one for their schools. “I knew I could help because of the Hippocampus experience,” Malhotra says. This venture gave him confidence and credibility for what lay ahead.

In 2004, the Hippocampus Reading Foundation (HRF) — a nonprofit organization — was founded with the goal of inspiring underprivileged children living in urban areas to read for fun. Part of the profit from HCC goes to the foundation; in addition, individual and corporate donors contribute significantly. These funds support librarian training and program development. “It is not a classic charity,” Malhotra notes, because HRF was never meant to be financially self-sustaining — but the organization’s mission had to be self-sustaining as a movement. The orphanage experience had taught Malhotra an important lesson: People do not value what is given to them for free. While the endemic indifference of the school system could not be remedied, HRF could ensure that the library, at least, was a welcoming place for students. That year, the team set up a pilot in five government schools in Bangalore.

The operating model for these HRF libraries is straightforward. At its most minimal, a children’s library is a room with age-appropriate reading material. Government schools or community centers provide the space for the libraries, so capital costs are low. Sometimes, the library is just a bookshelf in one corner of a classroom. Community-based partner organizations, including Rotary International, fund the book purchases. (It takes less than US$700 to stock a library for 300 students.) HRF then trains a teacher or a dedicated individual to get the library up and running, and then mentors them for three years. “The cost of training is largely borne by the foundation,” Malhotra says. Library operating costs and the librarian’s salary are paid for by a monthly fee of approximately 25 U.S. cents per student.

“But making a library work for children of first-generation learners was tougher than we imagined,” Malhotra adds.

Within three years, the Hippocampus team found a scalable solution to the challenge of drawing tentative readers into the unfamiliar world of books. Going beyond children’s literature in English, they scoured the market for books in vernacular languages. That helped. But one constraint remained: Fewer than half the children could read at a grade-appropriate level, even in their native tongues. So students could still become frustrated by books they picked off the shelf at random during any mandated library hour.

Building on Innovation

Then came the team’s “Eureka Moment.” They began to color-code the books in the catalog — green, red, orange, white, blue or yellow — based on the level of difficulty. GROWBY is the acronym for this technique. In addition, reading cards with pictures and simple text to help assess a student’s skills were made available. Using this method, librarians had the means to match the child with the right books in the spectrum. The program, GROW BY Reading (GBR), makes it possible to track a reader’s progress. Sponsors also have a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the initiative.

The GBR program became the engine of the foundation’s growth. Other features were added to the template to help children become lifelong readers. The team designed activities, or paper-based games, for books in the catalog. While few students look forward to quizzes at school, the children viewed these informal tests as a reward for reading a book, according to Sangeetha Menon, head of operations at the HRF. As in the Hippocampus experience centers, the reading rooms of the foundation’s libraries are not quiet zones. “Shhhhh! is something you will rarely hear in our libraries,” Menon says. Such vibrant spaces allow children to share the excitement generated by forays into the world of fiction. Near the entrance of a typical library, a “reading wall” has changing selections of colorful clippings from magazines and newspapers picked by the librarians. Everything is displayed at a child’s eye level. The HRF has set up 64 libraries in Karnataka. The organization also has one in Tamil Nadu and is in the process of setting up 95 more libraries there.

This innovative approach to children’s libraries caught the attention of other players, big and small, in the education sector. Room to Read, a San Francisco-based international organization committed to bringing literacy to children in the developing world, was one of them. Started a decade ago by a Microsoft executive, Room to Read has established more than 11,200 libraries in nine countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. “A program had to be put in place [that] could ensure that children pick up required cues to read independently, on a regular basis,” notes Sunisha Ahuja, country director of Room to Read, India. Hippocampus has a clear vision of what a children’s library should be — a place that sparks a love of reading — and has put a lot of thoughtful planning into realizing this vision, she adds.

Last year, Room to Read began collaborating with the Hippocampus Foundation, as did Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), the Indian government’s program under the United Nations’ Education for All initiative. The key is to provide children the right kind of books in school libraries, says Sandhya Sharma, project director for SSA, Karnataka state. (Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka.)

Elements of the GROW BY Reading program promise to translate well across states in linguistically-diverse India, and beyond. Working with a new language means finding the right books and developing activities for the titles, says Malhotra. Sometimes the pickings can be slim when it comes to children’s literature in regional languages. This is a real challenge but regional-language publishers will wake to the demand, he predicts. Room to Read will adapt the GBR program in the eight Indian states where it operates, according to Ahuja. It has already been implemented in 200 schools in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh states. The GBR book-leveling strategy has been rolled out in all the countries where Room to Read has a presence, she adds.

Since these methods evolved from the experience of working with constraints like limited resources, minimally-qualified librarians and underperforming schools, the approach should work in most comparable settings, notes Sandhya Rao (who shares her name with the editor of Tulika). A trustee on the board of the HRF, she recently gave a training workshop on the foundation’s techniques in Siem Reap, Cambodia, for Room to Read’s Southeast Asian arm.

Empowering Micro-entrepreneurs

While Room to Read is taking the model abroad, Malhotra’s sights are trained on rural India, and a new for-profit venture called Hippocampus Learning Center (HLC) that is designed to cater to the after-school needs of young children. Libraries are a vital component of the center. Malhotra’s team selects a candidate from a village, training him or her to set up the center and run it. This micro-entrepreneur, who raises the capital (around US$220) for the venture, charges students a monthly fee of US$1.50 for the after-school facilities; they pay 25 U.S. cents for the library, the same as patrons in the cities. The learning center earns its revenue from the annual fee of approximately US$10 that each student pays at the beginning of the school year.

The demand for after-school centers runs deep. Survey reports indicate that the quality of primary education offered by government schools in rural India is dismal. Last year, the HLC set up pilots in about 10 villages in Karnataka. India has 600,000 villages with nearly 150 million children enrolled in rural schools. “Our dream is to establish 100,000 centers within the next decade,” says Malhotra.

There are challenges aplenty in running this bottom-of-the-pyramid venture. Good trainers can’t be paid high salaries because the costs cannot be passed on to clients. “Nor is it easy to train someone who is not fluent in English to teach the language to kids,” Malhotra points out. In addition, there is a macroeconomic trend working against ventures in rural India: people from villages are steadily moving to cities, says Reuben Abraham, professor and executive director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions at the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business. For instance, the early adopters of a new system like Hippocampus may also be the first migrants to the cities, meaning the learning centers will have to start with a new crop of clients every so often. Besides, willingness and the ability to pay consistently for a service are two different things, Abraham notes. Malhotra, who is confident he has hit a good price point, says he is not unduly worried about larger economic trends he cannot control.

In the urban space, the experience centers aspire to be model children’s libraries, in hopes that others will use Hippocampus’s expertise to emulate this approach.  This year, e-readers — portable digital devices used for reading books and periodicals — will be introduced in the multimedia rooms at the experience centers. “In the not-so-distant future, prices may come down to a point where it makes sense to deploy such devices in rural libraries,” Malhotra says.

• Tharapar Staff

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  Reading room

  

• Tharapar Check-out desk

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  Volunteer professional librarians tutored the owner/managers, the result is a tidy, well-used and economical option for students

  

• Resource materials for entry exams

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  5,000 additional titles are cataloged and shelved in this reading room

  

• Our books on shelving we donated

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• I.C.E-YOUTH

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• I.C.E-YOUTH

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• ICE-Youth Chair

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  Over two dozen students volunteer as information specialists to assist hundreds of other student members using this extraordinary library

  

• Trendy Lunch Counter

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  Many city dwellers stop for mohinga enroute to work and for kau:sway lunch at street stalls like this.

  

• Engineering Volunteer Librarians

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  Mandalay's engineering university is a dozen years old with scarcely any funding for library acquisitions. The student-organized and managed library is used far more than the official library.

  

• Reading Makes a Nation Great

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  Volunteers keep disciplined control of circulation and replacement when books turn up missing. MBAPF has donated 5,000 of our books thus far, as students get more donations for shelving, we will donate more

  

• Stacks in Mandalay University's School of Medicine Student Library

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  Volunteer trustees rotate daily to keep this library open throughout the school year. It is heavily used, both the health-oriented books, the fiction and general reference material

  

• Trustees of the Student Library

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  Fifteen trustees volunteer annually to manage this library in rooms provided by the Rector. Our books are cataloged, shelved, loaned and managed professionally due to training by librarians who volunteer to help. Members pay 2000 K annually [$2.50] to pay for subscriptions and books in high demand.

  

We assist three very independent student-run libraries now operating in downtown Yangon. Oldest is Information Center for Every Youth, ICE-Youth. My August 2009 Newsletter noted this extraordinary library founded by students in 2002 to operate out of an attic. Within two years they raised sufficient rent for a single room on a commercial street, and by the time I first visited they had a longer lease on an upper room in a four-story building on 49th Street. Last year we donated $10,000 so they could open a second room for study and seminar discussions about public policy issues, each framed by a DVD documentaries the group has acquired from UN, US and INGO groups & agencies operating in Myanmar

What distinguishes this group is their dedication to assist less fortunate kids who lack private tuition more affluent parents arrange for their children. These dozen key activists in ICE-Youth offer books and test guidance to less fortunate secondary-school peers. Since our first gift of 2,000 books, their program has expanded, along with their membership, to include weekly discussions about important policy issues. Subsequently MBAPF has donated an additional 5,000 reference, texts, testing preparation and general literature books to this very active library.

Tharapar Library is located near the Chinatown section of Yangon and caters to young learners needing tutoring in computer and English skills. Thanks to our book donations via MBAPF, the thousand members of this library have access to a fine

Finally, revisit Knowledge Bank Library, which continues to expand, like Tharapar’s student owned & managed organization via mobile vans that rotate their holdings in Yangon’s distant suburbs to students unable to visit Yangon’s center where ICE Youth and Tharapar are located.

http://www.nargislibrary.org/2010/01/knowledge-bank-library/

Thank you, donors: thadu, thadu, thadu

I visited a dozen monastery-based schools where some of our English language books languish on shelves. Only a very few are used by advanced students; the vast majority of orphans and kids attending these schools have had no exposure to English, either spoken or written. All are gaining literacy in Burmese, but for those curious about literature, history or any knowledge beyond their basic texts [which cost between $1 and $1.70 for all required subjects], very few Myanmar language books are available. Our partner, Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation, has purchased and distributed over 120,000 copies of 10,000 titles to some 400 school and community libraries; but few of these books made it into the tiny monastic school libraries.

Sayadaw of Phayar Kyaung village: Dekkhinar Yone Monastic SchoolGiving thanks for gift of a pencil per student

A Bogalay Monastic School

Four teachers, including the monk

They study English

Behind every local or neighborhood library in Myanmar are local trustees. Often unseen by users, yet they are crucial to the success of the library. Most frequently they are entrepreneurs~~business men and women who usually sustain one or more monasteries. Their influence in the community overlaps with senior monks, health professionals,  and government officials.                 

Bogalay’s Tint Aung Library

Only a large village tract can sustain a tea shopPay Kyaung Village Tract, five villages feed students

Old library reading room

T

Trustees of brick library constructed after NargisPay Yar Kyaung Village

Readers familiar with Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal as well as the Book of Revelations know the magic associated with the number seven. Without comparing its role in Buddhist-associated numerology, I believe General Khin Nyunt chose “Seven Steps to Democracy” as his plan to move Myanmar from 20th Century military rule to 21st Century democracy because of the magical power associated with the number. When appointed Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt seemed secure as the experienced director of Military Intelligence, but in 2004 he was sacked and his entire unit of 13,000 MI was dismissed. Senior officers served serious prison time; the Prime Minister was placed under house arrest indefinitely. Yet, his plan lived on and Senior General Than Shwe evidently resolved to finish the seventh step in 2012 after the new Parliament opened for business and a serene senior general, Thein Sein, agreed to serve as President. Thousands of prisoners were released in 2011; over 600 political prisoners were released this weekend, including Premier Khin Nyunt.

Aung San Suu Kyi, commonly known as The Lady, will run for Parliament in April bi-elections for a seat she is sure to win. Many speculate she will be offered a cabinet post, possibly the critical Education Ministry, another crucial step towards reconciliation between the military leadership and the opposition National League for Democracy. The Lady announced at a recent Skype facilitated Asia Society meeting that her country is “on the verge of democracy.”

Visits by Hillary Clinton, George Soros, French, Italian, Japanese, Indian, and Australian foreign ministers, Bill Gates & a jet of corporate leaders like those who recently visited China, have led President Obama to re-establish full  ambassadorial relations soon. Still, sanctions remain in place. They seriously stifle investment and economic progress.

Within the U.S. Embassy, some senior State Department officers cling to the astonishing interpretation that U.S. sanctions have not harmed hundreds of thousands of women and children; instead they attribute all human rights abuses to Naypyidaw. Indeed, I was shocked to hear the Public Affairs Officer compare Syria favorably over Myanmar as promoting human rights! Bad policy based on blind ignorance dies hard.

I am encouraged that Senators McConnell and McCain as well as Congressman Crowley, all proponents of sanctions, are beating a path to Naypyidaw and The Lady’s doorstep. That sanctions enabled some military kleptarchs to partner with Chinese & Thai investors to ignore U.S. policy and strip this country of natural resources has been blithely ignored as if sanctions didn’t play a key role in creating this opportunity for crime. Fortunately, senior Obama officials appear to have gotten this message at last.

President Thein Sein is associated with a coterie of generals who recognize the damage of past practices; they closed the environmentally disastrous Myitsone dam and Ta-wei power plant projects, and are listening to pleas by the newly empowered “Irrawaddy Movement” advocates who are expanding civil institutions and environmental protections. I caution readers to remember this country’s history; progress can be interrupted in a flash of a gun or an order from a high official. Democracy is far from being institutionalized. But the Seventh Step has been taken, the Eighth is underway. Comments & photos on my library tour follow.

Report

For

20 Reading Rooms in Delta

World Vision Myanmar

(21^st November 2011)

Background

Approximately 2.4 million people[1] were severely affected when Cyclone Nargis hitMyanmar in May 2008, affecting 3 divisions (Ayeyarwady,Yangon and Bago) and 2 states (Kayin and Mon). Townships in Ayeyarwady were the hardest hit. Cyclone Nargis caused extensive loss of life and physical damage. Approximately 84,537 people died, another 53,836 went missing and 33,754 suffered injuries.

World Vision Myanmar (WVM) began its emergency response in five Townships in the delta by providing humanitarian assistance to the Nargis affected areas.

The Cyclone Nargis Transition Programme (CNTP) is one of the phases of WV Myanmar’s cyclone Nargis response and builds on the recovery phase. The program provides assistance focusing on 4 sectors such as Livelihood,WASH, CP and DRR in Bogale and Pyapon Townships for 2 years; April 2010 to March 2012.

Under the CP sector, education needs remain high in the area.  Due to a lack of adequate middle and high schools in the area older children have not had adequate access to middle and high school education.  Therefore many children only have had schooling up to the end of primary school.  In addition to poor access to education, the standard of education is also low.  This leaves children vulnerable and they end up working on the farms or in the fishing industry.  Children may also lack education opportunities due to their family circumstances.

To address these vulnerability issues WVM will increase the opportunities for children to access the knowledge with different ways such as Non-Formal Education (NFE), libraries and reading rooms. These education centres are a key part of building capacity of the community members under CNTP. Once, WV ends the work in the areas those centres will be carried out by the community member.

Narrative achievement of the project

As mention in the background to fill the remaining gaps in resources and skills needed in order to improve the knowledge of people in Bogale and Pyapon, WVM established reading rooms for the community members in target villages. And WVM supported existing libraries to be functioning effectively in their communities. Since Cyclone Nargis struck delta areas WVM response to the disaster and Child Friendly Space (CFS) centres were established. These CFS centres were transformed into Early Child Care and Development (ECCD) and Non Formal Education (NFE) centres in the Cyclone Nargis Recovery Program (CNRP) phase and beyond. In addition to the school buildings, and community centers, reading rooms were established at NFE and ECCD centers with the management of existing community groups and facilitation by WVM staff.

Establishing reading rooms benefited to the community members is not only for the children but also for the adult community members such as agriculture farmers, livestock farmers and those who would like to start their small business. With the help of Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation (MBAPF), reading rooms in delta areas were provided 4 tables, 4 bookshelves, 16 chairs in Pyapon and 16 tables, 16 bookshelves, 64 chairs in Bogale.

Participation of local community groups, Community Based Organizations (CBOs), and local Non Government Organizations (NGOs), those reading rooms are functioning smoothly. In the transition programme WVM is not only handing over material assets but also transferring knowledge and skills.  And also strengthening linkages between development actors at all levels will help the transition process and build sustainability.

WVM identified the reading rooms with following criteria;

1) Existing library with good building but not have enough books and furniture

2) Existing building (NFE, school or community centre) to establish library

2) Library committee functioning well or has strong and active community groups interested to run the reading rooms

Respect to all the needs and current capacities regarding to increase the knowledge and skills of the community members WVM established 20 reading rooms and provided the materials as mention below table.

Bogale Township

Pyapon Township

Financial Report

Photos of the libraries with providing materials chairs, tables and bookshelves

Thalake Gyi Library – Pyapon Township

Kyauk Ye Library – Pyapon Township

Hmawbi NFE cum Library – Pyapon Township

Ka Zin Chaung Library – Bogale Township

Kaung Su Library – Bogale Township

Nge Thu Library – Bogale Township                        None Chaung Library – Bogale Township