Happy 2nd Birthday!

Gyan Library completed two years today! We reached many milestones this year

• 1.2 lakh books read

• 10,000 book collection

• 3,000 members

Our average member has read 40+ books. Many have read 100+ books. We are proud of the response we have seen from the kids

Our Journey:

We started on Sept 5, 2021 just as the 2nd COVID wave was ending. The first year was about expanding to new areas and fine-tuning our policies.

The 2nd year was about consolidating and reaching new readers at existing locations. We have made very few changes this past year.

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The library has grown quite nicely. Here are some charts:

#New books added each month

We started with ~2,500 books and now we have 10,000+. We are adding an average of 100-200 books per month

#New members each month

Without any advertising, we are growing at a steady pace of ~100 new members per month

#Checkouts (books read) each month

We have stabilized at a rate of around 6,000 books per month. This is better than last year but we hope to increase this over time. We can support a higher rate.

Challenges

We faced several hurdles:

1. Book maintenance

Most of our books are new or like-new when we add them. But the wear and tear starts showing quickly.

We are attempting to have plastic covering on all of our paperback books to increase their lifespan

We have also added a new staff member exclusively for book maintenance

2. Improving our book collection

We have utilized every inch of the van for books but we still need more space. Feedback from parents has always been for more books.

To increase variety, we have swapped the books in the van with new books multiple times. We have books in storage that we try to rotate.

Slowly we are also adding books in other languages. Finding good story books in Hindi and Marathi is a bit difficult - especially for younger kids.

3. Repairs

Over the past year, we have replaced > 10 tyres and multiple engine parts. It continues to be very challenging to do all this while keeping to our schedule of stops.

Events

To keep kids interested, we held a few events. Each was unique and fun.

Mar 23 - Financial Literacy

Apr 23 - Earth Day - Best out of Waste

June 23 - Book Donation Drive

We plan to hold more such events this year and keep trying new things each time

Book Donation drive

At the end of the academic year in June, we organized a drive to collect used academic books and sent them to the Zilla Parishad School Hiwali (near Nashik).

The response was fantastic. We collected almost half-ton (500kg) of books spanning all grades and sent a tempo to deliver.

Future

Gyan Library has completed two years as a registered non-profit company. After completing 3 years, we will be able to seek funds from foreign donors.

Our plan is to seek funds from large MNCs. We will always keep our library free and accessible.

Once we get some external funding, we want to expand further - hire more staff and add new locations.

We are aware that our mobile library has its limitations and it can be stressful to meet timings.

• We will now allow 4 books to be borrowed at a time

• The one-week grace period is automatic. Kids can now keep the books they like for up to 3 weeks (2 weeks regular + 1 week grace period)

We are also going to start a STAR reader program to encourage consistent reading behavior. This program will reward kids for reaching some reading milestones. The goal is to increase engagement with kids. Once a reading habit is formed, it will stay with them forever.

We are very thankful to all the parents for the amazing support.

Many thanks from the Gyan Library team 🙏