The school Library Project was an extension of Unnati’s preexisting work in the domain of literacy development in the MLE setting. In the efforts of enhancing literacy, a library and reading room became an obvious next step. A paucity of reading material emerged as an issue during Unnati’s flagship intervention 'MLE based literacy pedagogy development'.
Appreciating that an adequate supply of reading material is a precursor to enable children to read, in 2021 Unnati commissioned the Library activities to supplement its literacy classes. In 2022, a school library project - that becomes operational in the school time was commissioned.
Develop self-reading skills of children at the very primary stage of schooling and enhance their vocabulary in Marathi, a language of medium of schools. This skill paves way to self-learning at the later stage of education, where understanding, making meaning from self-reading becomes a required ability.
Provide ample reading resources to the children, who have just a textbook in their lives which is provided by the government. Reading other varieties of books will enhance their learning in schools.
Written language is very different from the spoken language. It is always crisp, to the point and contains subject specific terms, definitions. The literary language is also different from the spoken language. It is essential that children become familiar with the written language as a vast pool for enlightening the life that lies in the written world.
Help children from remote tribal areas know the path of the library of books which leads to knowledge acquisition, learn different perspectives, worldviews, lives and cultures and thereby broaden their horizon.
School library programme is run in the schools run by the state government of Maharashtra. Regular library sessions with students from 5th and 6th grade are conducted three days a week throughout the year.