Introduction

For my President’s Scout Award community service project, I conducted a project to renovate and donate books to the Methsith Children’s Library in the Jagaddala Children’s Development Center located in Kindelpitiya, Bandaragama. The above-mentioned library is situated in an orphanage adjoining the Sri Punyawardhanaramaya temple. The orphanage which the library is situated in is currently home to about 16 boys, all of whom are still in school. The library is used by them as well as the students who attend the Dhamma School in the adjoining temple.

Reasons to rennovate the library

The library was in a state of disrepair and disorganisation. The actual room in which the library was located had not been used in a long time and therefore the cupboards used to store the books have either been broken or have rotted away. Most of the books have either rotted away due to water damage or been eaten by rats and other insects while they were locked away in cupboards. The room in which the library used to be was covered with dust and dirt and many books had just been left out on the floor. The books were not kept in any order; therefore it was hard for anyone to find books they like to read. Due to all these reasons, I believe that the library should be renovated, the books should be organised and catalogued and that more books should be donated to the library.

Sustainable development goals acheived

This project achieves the sustainable development goal number 4, which is “Quality Education”. This SDG aims to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. The children in the orphanage are underprivileged and do not have access to the educational materials that other children have. So, I plan to give them the ability to have many learning and educational opportunities by providing them with a good functioning library that can be used effectively for many years. My hope by giving them a functioning library with a proper lending system in place is to allow all the children to have access to most of the educational and other reading materials that they need regardless of being underprivileged. I think that this truly achieves the goal of inclusive and quality education for all the children in this child development centre.

Tasks acheived

• Collected, cleaned and sorted all usable books
• Cleared and cleaned the library room
• Repaired the broken library door and plywood wall panels.
• Painted the library room including floor
• Repaired the broken library cupboard
• Went to Library Services Board (“pusthakaala sewa mandalaya”) & bought all necessary stationery for a library including Index book, lending sheets to fix in books, dockets to fix in books to put lending cards, lending cards, library seals etc.
• Donated a seal and an ink stamp pad for library use
• Further cleaned the usable books
• Affixed coloured sticker labels on books according to categories
• Affixed Library lending sheets and lending cards with dockets on each book
• Set up and arranged the library racks, which were received as donations.
• Labelled the library racks according to the book categories
• Stacked the books according to those categories
• Entered all the books in the library index book
• Fixed a net on a grill to prevent rats entering the library
• Replace the light bulbs of the library with 20W LED to have the required lux level for reading
• Cleaned the library room