Essar Foundation organized a workshop titled Library Inclusion Program involving teachers of 25 schools from the Khambhalia and Lalpur blocks in Gujarat's Jamnagar district. The workshop was aimed at refurbishing the existing libraries in the schools while cultivating the reading habit in children using the library as an effective learning medium. The initiative was in line with Essar Foundation's vision of building a "Reading India".
The Foundation believes that the value of education cannot be emphasized enough. It seeks to make a positive impact in the lives of all who come in contact with Essar's operations. All its efforts and resources are focused on fleshing out the 3E framework comprising Entrepreneurship, Environment and Education. As part of this 3E framework, there are six long-standing programs on education, health, women's empowerment, livelihood, infrastructure and environment.
Through its focus on Education, the Foundation seeks to achieve objectives like:
- Resolve fundamental issues of access and quality in education
- Enable young minds to realize and achieve their true potential through education
- Promote use of creative tools to make education an enriching experience
- Improve infrastructure and environment to enable better knowledge acquisition.
Till date, more than 10,000 students have been supported by the Foundation's Education Program.
Keeping the primary objective of resolving the issues of access and quality in education and thereby enhancing learning levels, the library inclusion program is among the Foundation's key steps towards building a "Reading India". According to estimates, one in three school-going children in India cannot read fluently. And children who cannot read are unable to learn because they do not understand what is being taught. The result: many of these children simply drop out of school at an early stage.
The library inclusion program is critical to the learning development of students. The Foundation will continue strengthening the reading and learning capacity of the schools. It plans to ramp up the program by continuously hand-holding the schools and monitoring progress in reading capabilities of the students. This will be achieved by conducting workshops, providing books, arranging story-telling sessions, introducing creative teaching-learning methods and many such measures aimed at enhancing the joy of reading and raising the bar for learning. The Foundation will also provide more than 4,000 books, with each of the 25 schools recieving a set of 150 books.
The program has generated tremendous enthusiasm among teachers and children alike. They were excited to see the books and new teaching material at their schools.
