LiS Program a responsive entity of Bookworm

Bookworm’s Libraries in School Program birthed in 2011 fondly referred to now as v1.0 and in the decade past has enabled a pop – up library experience in many schools, in and around Panjim, Goa. The selection of schools in the past decade was organic in some ways and strategic in others.

We were initially guided by proximity to the main Bookworm library to enable ease of transportation costs and a team that multi tasked on other projects when not in school. It was also guided by enrolment numbers. While story time is always intended to be an intimate personal as well as social experience, the kind of practice that the Bookworm Read Aloud enables is strengthening to the group and we felt it was optimum to reach more children through every exchange.

For close to five years, we worked with just  3 – 5 large schools providing weekly story hours and book lending to children from Std 1 – 7 and our learning was tremendous but the toll of an underpaid team was perhaps larger. Fatigue, exhaustion, absence of immediate reinforcement, life energy were beginning to sap our scope and then we had a fortuitous call from a Cipla Foundation representative that changed our LiS program in the years to come.We are now in our tenth year of the Library in School’s ( LiS) program and we are stronger and more purposeful because of Cipla Foundation. The Foundation have been steadfast in it’s appreciation and acknowledgement of the place for story, reading enrichment and access to books that LiS enables. We find ourselves resourcing small government primary schools in two Taluka’s of Goa thanks to the enabling and vision that Cipla Foundation seeded in us. While we were never questioned about our selection, we were encouraged to expand, to think of other ways to reach children and to push our thinking to include some aspect of scale only because the needs of our community are so great.

Children have very little access to rich, high quality , varied reading material in their early years of school. Libraries and library ‘periods’ are not yet institutionalised in the Primary Years where we know from global research they are the most critical spaces. Further, the small rural primary school continues to be a site of contesting issues -enrolment numbers, fragile resources, multi grade teaching – learning groups and in some spaces an apathy that has emerged from being part of a system for too long.

What we learnt from our past experience is that the early infusion of a library practice needs high energy. It needs to ride on the wave of an often depressed learning environment, long school day, struggle with literacy and space. It works in the way it does because it is a pop- in program. It infuses fresh energy because it comes once a week into the school yard/room, is highly planned to provide a balance of rigour and ease and provides teachers and students with story joy for an hour per class.

Most of this has been rendered impossible in the current pandemic and yet children’s needs could not be more critical than ever.  At the start of the last academic year, we brainstormed around last year and emerged with a substitute plan for access and streaming a story hour to children as well as  working with Government teachers through a series of short online trainings. It was heartening on many counts. Attendance to the monthly webinars grew from 40 teachers when we began in July 2020 to over 120 teachers when we closed in March 2021. Over 50+ adaptations of our Read Aloud selections were dramatised and creatively adapted for our virtual community and books reached homes in remote villages and wards of the hinterland for the very first time.

Along with thousands of practitioners in the country we imagined a normal school year and so conceptualised plans that reverted to our original pop-up experience in some schools and continued book support in others for 2021- 22. This has now changed again, and we have just begun a LiS v2.3.

The LiS v2.3 plan continues to provide access to books to 62 Government primary schools that have been selected for the teacher initiative, commitment and support the ideas of library practice  demonstrated from last year. We are so proud of this growing number of teachers who are keen to enable their students to be strengthened by book joy and benefits that library brings to literacy.  We are further offering a training and mentoring program to 20 selected Government Primary teachers which includes small library corners in their school rooms and intense engagement with the Bookworm team throughout the year enabling this to become a systematic practice when our children return as students into the classroom. It may seem small to the growing numbers that most organisations are able to promote but for a small team like Bookworm, that puts intensity and quality of engagement at the head, this is already big and exciting.  We have some small pilot projects nestled within the scope of our work for this year and we are thankful and honoured to carry our vision into 2021-22 despite a changing world.

We know we would have still been here if not for the Cipla Foundation support but we also know we would have not been here in this way, stronger – much more aware, much healthier in rigour and pedagogy – confident and secure that together we can make a difference, one story and one story book at a time.