LitIndia centre – 202208
Address – Kehar Mandal Tola, Khagaria
District – Khagaria
State – Bihar

Project LitIndia established its eighth library at Kehar Mandal Tola, which is a small village in Khagaria district, situated on the outskirts of Bihar. It is a blessing to the children in this region, as earlier they did not have access to school and quality education. Our journey of opening a library here started with many challenges. However, the enthusiasm of the children to study and our efforts stood out and gave us the power to overcome adversity and achieve success. It took us around two months to build the library.

The drive to Kehar Mandal Tola was a long one. We would start at 4 am from Bhagalpur, our base, and travel for six hours to reach the village. We had to work hard and go without our daily meals to ensure that we finished the work on time, as we had to head back to Bhagalpur before sunset.

Even though there was a school in the village, it was not well equipped. It was a small space with one blackboard and four benches. The students had no books, just thin notebooks to write on. To bridge this gap in learning and provide a better educational environment for the students, we started building our library. 

A lady from the village who had been teaching the kids after school for a long time offered to help us in our endeavour. She had heard about our LitIndia centres that had opened in other remote villages in Bihar and she was eager for us to open our library there. She informed us about the two issues that the children in the village faced apart from the lack of books and resources. The first was that, due to lack of space, the children had to study in three batches at school and would wait outside the school for the previous batch to finish in the sun. Due to this, they would get a limited time slot to study to accommodate all batches during school timings. The second issue was that girls in the village were not encouraged to attend school.

While establishing our library Kehar Mandal Tola, we made sure that we targeted all the problems that the children faced. We equipped our library with books, stationery, blackboards, and benches. We constructed three rooms behind our library so that all the three batches of students could run simultaneously. This ensured that there was no loss of learning and the children no longer had to wait for their turn. We held education awareness drives in the village to educate the locals about the importance of girls’ education. We took the help of the village lady who had been helping us in our endeavour so that we could convince the women to send their daughters to study. Today, the ratio of boys to girls studying in the library is almost equal, which is one of our biggest achievements there.

We are constantly trying to come up with new ideas to help the children in the village. Their dedication and enthusiasm are a big morale booster for us to continue doing what we do. We encourage them to come up with innovative ideas for events on the problems they face and figure out their solutions through what they learn at our centres. We are committed to making Kehar Mandal Tola a better place for the children and their future.