Village libraries · nine courtyards · Birbhum
Boi Uthon runs nine small libraries in village courtyards and verandahs across Birbhum — a few hundred books each, open evenings, a keeper-didi paid a fair honorarium, and an issue register that shows what actually gets read. No building fund, no inauguration stones: shelves, books, light and a reliable open hour. This page costs all four openly, and a tenth courtyard is waiting.
The issue register is the truth of each library: what went out, what came back, what the children asked for that we do not have. Those registers — not a readers-created count — are the only numbers this page will ever speak in.
For Donors who want books on shelves and a didi paid to keep them · People with good Bangla and Hindi books outgrowing their homes · Anyone who can read aloud to a courtyard once a month
These four are promises this page makes on your behalf. Keep them or change them — they are not decoration.
Ways to give or join
Every figure is the network's actual cost this year: children's books at the College Street wholesale rate, a keeper-didi's monthly honorarium, kerosene-free solar lamps for courtyards where the current fails, and the carpenter's bill for a shelf that survives monsoon damp. A library here is cheap the way a boat is cheap — as long as someone is paid to bail.
One-time
Thirty new books at wholesale — bought against the registers' wish-lists: Bangla stories and poems, Hindi and English readers, the science-question books children actually fight over.
Monthly
The keeper-didi's honorarium, the lamp's upkeep, register stationery and the mending tape that keeps a loved book alive — one courtyard's whole month, honestly divided.
One-time
A new library's whole start: the carpenter's shelves, mats, a solar lamp, the first two hundred books at wholesale, and the opening month's honorarium. A village has already asked; the courtyard is waiting.
Volunteer
One Sunday a month, one courtyard, one story read properly — with voices. The didis say a good reader doubles the next week's issues, and the registers back them up.
In kind
Children's and general books in good condition, Bangla first — brought or couriered to the Suri office, checked against the wish-lists, stamped and distributed by register demand.
Pick the way you want to help and it lands in the form below. Picking another replaces it — this page records one intention at a time, not a basket. NO MONEY MOVES ON THIS PAGE: nothing is charged, deducted or collected here, and how giving actually happens is written under the form.
On the ground
No staged reading-circle photography with washed faces and new clothes — the libraries look like the villages they live in, which is the point. These frames are placeholders for your own courtyards at their real open hour. Children's faces only with guardians' consent.
How giving actually happens
Paste the society's bank account name, number and IFSC here, and the UPI ID if you use one — exactly as the bank has them. State plainly that nobody collects cash at the courtyards in the network's name.
Words you have permission to print
A keeper-didi, a village committee member or a young reader's guardian, in their own words, with their name — collected with written permission; a child's words only with a guardian's consent.
Your honest record
Last quarter's register summaries, dated: open evenings held, issues by library, books added, money in and what it bought. The audited annual figures go here exactly as the auditor wrote them.
The frames above are placeholder photographs of the kind of work this page is about — not this organisation's own record, and never a person whose face buys sympathy. The slots below are deliberately blank: this is a template, and an invented beneficiary count, an invented donor or an invented 80G number would be a lie on a page asking people to give — and inventing the tax registration is an offence. Fill each slot with something real and checkable, then delete this line.
How it works
Three steps, and money moves only to the society's account, only against a receipt.
The form records what you picked and how to reach you. Nothing is charged here — this page cannot take money, by design. Villages wanting a library write through their committee; the same form carries that too.
Within the week, with the account details and receipt mechanics — or the wish-list for book gifts, or the reading rota, or the site-visit plan for a tenth-courtyard pledge.
The quarterly sheet summarises every register: evenings open, issues, additions. Better still, come to an open hour — the children will recommend books to you with great firmness.
Before you give
Because a building eats the book budget and then asks for a watchman. A courtyard library sits inside village life — the didi lives there, the children pass it anyway, and the rent is a relationship with the host family, renewed in respect and occasionally in mangoes. The money stays in books and honorariums, where it reads.
The issue registers answer this better than we could: they are summarised every quarter, library by library, and the didis will show you the originals at any open hour. Registers have slow months and monsoon gaps too, and we publish those as they fall — a library's truth is seasonal, like everything else here.
Because every closed village library we have ever surveyed died the same death: it ran on an unpaid woman's goodwill until her family needed her hour back. The honorarium is modest, fair and printed in the quarterly sheet. It is the difference between a library and a bookshelf.
Good ones, gladly — against the wish-list, Bangla first, checked at the office before shelving. We say no, kindly, to torn textbooks, outdated encyclopaedias and anything unreadable that would make the shelves a cupboard of guilt. The children notice quality faster than any librarian.
Only if the 80G cell at the top carries a current number, checkable on the income-tax portal. The office shares the certificate before any transfer; an empty cell means ask first.
The one thing this page asks
One form, one intention. The office replies within the week — nothing is charged or collected here.
You want to help with
Nothing yet — pick a way to give above, or say it in the form.
Three required fields: a name, a way to reply, and which of four conversations this is — a donor, a reader, a book-giver and a village committee each get a different reply, and the last one gets a visit. Deliberately absent: any amount field (the cards carry the costs), any PAN (that belongs with the 80G receipt at donation time), and any payment field — this page records intentions and takes nothing.
Your details go to the society's office for this one reply and the reading rota if you joined it. Never sold, no appeal calls, and no child's name leaves an issue register.