Project: Village Libraries

Project : Village Libraries
State : Tamil Nadu
Development Focus: Education

About the NGO*: Tamil Nadu Science Forum(TNSF) is a People's movement working in Literacy, Education, Health, Women's Equality, Computer Education, Enterprises, Land and Water management. For more details, please visit TNSF website

Summary of Project: . The cost of books makes the village library to be quite expensive at the start. Hence a more scalable and inexpensive approach is needed before a fully fledged village library can be implemented. TNSF in partnership with AID-India has designed a cost-effective project to start libraries in 2000 villages of Tamil Nadu. With a cost of Rs 4 lakhs per year, the project proposes to run effective libraries in 2000 villages at a total cost (reading material, shipping + programme support) of Rs 16 per village per month.

Objectives of Project:

1. To create a sustainable library and media network which pro-actively reaches out to people all over the state. The starting scale should be in the order of 1000 villages and in its full-fledged form the network should directly reach out to at least 10,000 villages and should be able to run entirely on locally generated funds.
2. To ensure continuous production of progressive educational materials - both Reading and Visual materials. These should be low-cost, high-quality materials so that a wide section will not only read it, but will be willing to also buy it. The project will be implemented in phases. During the first phase of the project, the libraries will mostly have one page stories written by the volunteers. These will also include health and education pamphlets. If you would like to contribute a story, please write to the project coordinator.

Requested Budget: $4500.

Status: Approved.

Project Coordinators: Kavita Karandikar
Contact Email: kavitakarandikar@rediffmail.com

Additional Information
Project Proposal: proposal (pdf)
Presentation Slides :
Visit Report:
Correspondence Notes: Initial Q&A, Village library register Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4,
Relevant Minutes: Jan 24, Jan 31,

If you would like to contribute towards an AID project, please send a check made in favour of AID to the following address:

AID-Austin,
1 University Station A6220
SOC #108,
Austin TX 78712