(In front of the newly built library building! Pic cred: Ms. Lockwood)

Taking a trip to Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School for the opening of their new library building

Today some members of Room To Read, including myself, visited the nearby Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School – our partner school. RTR has maintained a long partnership with this school, and one of the main goals of our service group is to help build their library. Finally, after putting in the work to help raise funds for building their library building – we attended the opening!

When we arrived it was quite clear that the school buildings were old and small in space, Ms. Lockwood encouraged us to reflect on the stark contrast between OSC and Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School. I believe this definitely gave us some food for thought.

The opening ceremony consisted of some monks that chanted prayers and teachings, which everyone respectfully listened to. Then Ms. Amalee, the school’s principal, gave a speech that talked about the journey it was to get to this point. She discussed how there were many obstacles along the way, but with the help of RTR, the monks, and a few other people, they were able to achieve this dream of a school library. I found her speech to be quite inspiring, as she talked about working hard towards achieving your dreams and everyone contributing to their part.

(Ms. Amalee giving her speech. Pic cred: The author.)

Then, Ms. Lockwood gave a speech that listed some of the main events that our service group carried out in order to help Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School build its library. After this ceremony, we had some (very sweet!) tea and snacks. The students that attended this school were very sweet, and I’m glad that we’re planning on another visit as I want to sit down and have proper conversations with them.

While taking a brief tour around the school, Ms. Lockwood talked about new ideas and events in order to help this school further. She mentioned the upcoming Karaoke Night and potentially holding an English class in collaboration with other service groups – in order to teach the students English.

Afterward, during our service session in the afternoon, the members printed out tickets for the Karaoke Night and packed books which will once again be sent off to our partner schools. Eleez, Dharya, and I also talked with Dr. Mechum about changes to the Karaoke Night – such as moving its date to the 25th and holding it from 4 – 6.

(The Room To Read group with the monks and teachers of Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School. Pic cred: Ms. Lockwood.)

Learning outcomes

• LO1 – Strength and growth
  • Throughout the journey of helping Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School raise funds to build their library, I have definitely been able to refine my leadership, organisation skills, and time management.
  • I think that these have then in turn become strengths that allowed me to contribute successfully as a leader of RTR.

• LO3 – Initiative & planning
  • Taking action in order to successfully carry out events and fundraisers that helped us with our aim in RTR exercised this learning outcome. As a service group, we have been able to successfully plan and conduct many events – and for the future we have many things coming up as well!

• LO6 – Global engagement
  • Room To Read aims to help our partner schools gain better quality resources and reading spaces, this engages with global issues regarding the lack of learning resources.
  • Raising funds for them to build a school library was the biggest accomplishment toward helping with this issue. 
  • Seeing the differences between OSC and Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School definitely opened my eyes more to the severity of this global issue and the ways that we can help alleviate the situation.