Nineteen libraries before June

We are opening nineteen school libraries before the academic year starts in June. The full cost is ₹12,00,000 and the full school list, with UDISE codes, is on the campaign page. The deadline is not a fundraising device. A library that arrives in August arrives after the term has found its rhythm, and in our experience it takes an extra full term to establish the reading hour. A library that is on the shelf in week one becomes part of how the school works. Each site costs between ₹38,000 and ₹72,000 depending on enrolment. That covers 400 to 1,200 titles graded against ASER reading levels, one lockable steel almirah, the colour-coded shelving scheme, and a term of training for the teacher who will run it. It does not cover our staff time, which comes from the General Fund. ₹2,500 stocks a shelf of fifty books. ₹50,000 opens a library outright and we will tell you which school it was. Eleven of the nineteen are in schools with no library room at all, where the collection will live in an almirah in a classroom. That is not ideal and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is still nineteen times better than the alternative.