To fulfill the pre-requisites of Shikharapur community campus established in 2062 B.S. affiliated under TU, library was established. Though the library was started with limited resources in a room of private school then we member of Shikharapur Community Campus presented a proposal to Share and care Nepal to ask for funding for library management. Then Share and Care Nepal gave us a fund of fifty thousand. By this fund we bought books and a set of computer and with the fund from other sources we bought table, chairs, and reception rack and book case. As by community support and community organization library was established, we made a decision to not only limit it in a boundary of campus but as a community library from where all the members of the community would be benefited.
On 2062 B.S., 4th Mangsir Shikharapur Community Campus was shifted to Share and Care Nepal office and compound. Together with partial financial support of SCN we built another building and a room with managed system was separated for community library.
With the great effort for searching sources of library resources we have been able to arrange daily, weekly, fort-nightly, monthly newspapers and also Nepali and English literature, books related to science, economics, poems, stories, women health, agriculture, forests and textbooks of campus altogether there are three thousand in number.
It is surprising to us that in a certain amount of time we have increased books from 200-300 to 3000. Beside this great success the credit goes to Share and Care Nepal , ASC and students of bachelor in social work from different colleges who were placed their as a trainee to fulfill their practical study. Students after trained about library they searched different publisher within a month and they started collecting books for library. The organizations and publisher who have helped us by providing books were Room to Read, ICIMOD, United Mission to Nepal, EKTA books, Dr. Sharad Wanta, Prof Dr. Jagannath Shrestha, St. Xavier's College, Education Ministry, etc
Now the community library is opened in the morning from 6 AM to 9AM for the campus purpose and from 11:00 AM to 5 PM in the day time to women groups, child groups, etc are given the opportunity to use the library with a minimum amount of twenty-five rupees.
So as a whole, a library established with a new model is popular in Pharping from the day of its establishment. Due to advertisement in different newspapers it had made the library the centre of attraction in Pharping. The increasing interests of students, other groups and their presence in the library show the effect of library in community.
In this way a small library which was established with a limited resources has now become a community library with the great effort of women groups of six VDCs , Share and Care Nepal, students of Bachelor of social work (BSW) , and also many organizations and publishers such as Room to Read, EKTA books, ICIMOD, UMN library etc.
Initiation of Farmers' Corner:
Under model educational village program we have plan to assist farmers to update their traditional farming. We have set objectives to train them to work using modern technology. As per our learning, unity among them is must essential. So we have envisioned establishing a Farmer's School in this area. Farmers' school consists of number of farmers groups within ward, village or VDCs. The main target of this program is to aware and train them.
Farmers from different fields become members of this school. This will be like a common platform to come and gather in the same place, so that they can share their ideas and update their knowledge.
This is the concept to teach farmers. Farmers are wasting their time in traditional systems so they should be immediately updated and brought in a common forum so that it would be easy to utilize our resource and we can get a large amount of return from agriculture.
Our first step in Farmers' School is Farmers' Corner in our community library. Farmer's corner is the collection of books, magazine, calendar, technology book, posters, pamphlets etc about agriculture both plant and livestock.
This practice is for the farmers to make them read books; there will be numbers of books collected from different related organizations', departments and libraries as well. Farmers can join the library, read or lend books as per the requirement.
Recent news of agriculture, newspaper cutting, vegetables and fruits price update are posted at the library. So this is a campaign to bring farmers in a common platform where they share their technology. Gradually it can create an Agriculture Cooperative which will work on behalf of farmers only.
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