Read Bhutan

The alpine community of Ura in Bumthang gets a library of its own through Rural Education and Development (Read) Global. METHO DEMA finds out more about the idea that gave birth to the community library.

On a trek in Nepal dur­ing the late 1980’s, Dr Antonia Neubauer, fondly known as Toni to her employees, asked her Nepali guide what he wished most for his home village. “A li­brary” was the answer. From that fateful day in Nepal, the journey has brought Toni’s initiative to Bhutan today.

In November 2008, Read Global signed an MoU with the Royal Edu­cation Council (REC) of Bhutan to establish a Read Bhutan office in Thimphu. Read Global was launched in 1991 as the non-profit arm of Myths and Mountains, a cul­tural travel agency founded by Dr Antonia Neubauer in the late 1980’s. Currently headquartered in Washing­ton DC, it has country offices in Nepal and India.

Like the Read Global of­fice, Read Bhutan’s mission is to empower rural communi­ties using a replicable model for sustainable educational, economic and community development that pairs non-profit libraries with for-profit ventures.

Read began its journey by working to alleviate poverty and illiteracy in Nepal – one village, one person, at a time. It first began with eight por­ters carrying 900 books and a card catalog over an 11,800-foot pass down into the tiny Nepali community of Jun­besi where locals had never seen 900 books at one time in their lives. Nearly more than one and half decade later, the community of Ura will see that history being repeated as the first Read Bhutan library is to be inaugurated there.

Read Model bears 80 per­cent to 85 percent of the total cost of the project, while the community contributes the rest either in the form of la­bour or land, if not in cash.

Read Bhutan provides seed design, build, furnish, and stock libraries, train librar­ians, and launch an income-generating business in each rural community to help pay for the library in the long run. Communities interested to have a Community Library and Resource Centre (CLRC) will have to submit a proposal to Read Bhutan office.

According to the field coor­dinator of Read Bhutan, Read Global and Read Bhutan’s ap­proach is unique and realistic to the organization which at­taches a viable business plan suitable to the community with the CLRC so that the cost of the CLRC is taken care of by the sustainable project.

Ura community has pro­posed cash crop packaging and retailing as its business plan. The Read Bhutan office has so far received proposals for establishment of CLRC from Punakha and Gelephu.

A winner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s prestigious Access to Learn­ing Award, the organiza­tion has helped establish 49 community resource centres throughout Nepal and India.

During one of her presenta­tions in Bhutan, Carol Erick­son, the Executive Director of Read Global, said, “I’ve often been asked whether people in rural parts of the develop­ing world will actually use a library. Our statistics show that they have become vital resources for the communi­ties in which they are located where it is rare for library us­ers not to visit at least twice a week, if not more.”

The process of establishing a library is not as smooth and as easy as it sounds, accord­ing to Karma Jurmin, the Sec­retary of Library Management Committee (LMC) of Ura community responsible for setting up the library. “Since most of the inputs have to be from the community, the progress is slow as the com­munity is not really aware of the benefits of establishing a library and therefore do not contribute as much as they can,” he said.

One Response to “Read Bhutan”

1. Phala Dorji says:

   March 2, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   I don’t think we can call Ura as Apline village or in the Alpine Zone. Alpine is normally pasture between treeline and snowline. From Ura the tree line is way ahead and Ura is still below the tree line.

   Reply