Hippocampus Reading Foundation

To inspire children to read more!

Current scenario - In India, most underprivileged children are first generation school goers and their parents may or may not stress on the importance of education. With little support from family and with schools focusing only on curriculum-based learning no effort is put into developing the independent reading and writing skills of these children.

The problem – Reading is a basic competency that plays an integral part in the life of every child with many advantages. However, very often it is taken for granted and there is no focus in providing resources to improve this skill. There is a lack of good books, libraries and librarians to help develop the reading habit of children.

The solution – A fun, interactive library with great books and a friendly librarian. By providing them with the right reading environment, guiding their reading interests and giving them incentives to come back for more, we can successfully influence the reading skills of these children and improve reading comprehension in classrooms.

For the past 4 years we have been working towards creating such libraries and making them accessible to as many underprivileged children as possible. We have partnered with 13 organisations in Karnataka to set up libraries and implement our library programme in 37 government schools, 22 community centres and 6 low-end private schools reaching out to over 17,000 children.

The core of these libraries is our activity based library programme called GROW BY Reading. Through this programme we assess the reading levels of children, lead them to read books at their skill levels and help improve their reading comprehension and fluency at a pace that they are comfortable with. We also train and empower librarians to run these libraries.

1. Reading is an important skill that can be a lot of fun.

2. Reading must be encouraged, sustained and developed as a habit in children.

3. A fun and active library is essential to inspire children to want to read more.