HRF partners with ALC in Tamil Nadu

The Hippocampus Reading Foundation (HRF) has partnered with the Arcot Lutheran Church (ALC) in Tirukoilur for the School Library Project. Our library programme will now include 96 new schools supported by ALC. It also means that our programme will soon be available in Tamil!

We are thrilled with such a great start to the New Year and look forward to this association. Many thanks to Doug and Jane Koons, Lutheran Partners Associates who write:

2009 is the year of the book for the ALC Schools. Right before Christmas, Mr. James Mathialagan, School Project consultant, and his volunteers crisscrossed the geography of the ALC to deliver libraries in bins and baskets. The heavy duty storage bins with tight lids protect the books and the Little Red Riding baskets carry materials from classroom to classroom.

It simply does not get much better than watching the students of Alathi look on in wonderment as Headmistress Rosy turns the pages of a new library book full of illustrations. By the time she finished, parents and villagers were also ringed around to see the last page. Alathi is one of the ALC schools in the Kalrayan Hills for tribal children.

Getting materials to Melvellar gives whole new meaning to mobile library. Because of the monsoons, books were carried by hand and head across rivulets, over wet rocks and up the hill to the school. Children and adults alike enjoyed the procession.

Next week headmistresses, headmasters and library-in-charge teachers will convene at the School Project headquarters for special motivational training on how to encourage reading. Experts from the Hippocampus Reading Foundation in Bangalore will share their innovative and field-tested methods for having students ‘Grow By Reading.’

Many of you have expressed how meaningful it is to be library sponsors. Mrs. Alma Strohm’s family gave her the gift of a library for her 85th birthday. As an educator who began her teaching career in a one-room school in South Dakota, she knows intimately the impact of libraries in children’s lives.

As we turn the page into a New Year, the ALC School Library Project sends you all good wishes for 2009. May your own reading list be fun, engaging and enlivening!

Jane and Douglas Koons

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