SD Inpres Wudu had had a library in their school before Taman Bacaan Pelangi (TBP) made a partnership with their school. However, due to the scarcity of book choices available, students seemed to rarely visit the building. Thus, it was deemed as a fresh breath when TBP introduced the concept of child friendly library.

The establishment of child friendly library in their school has been such a breakthrough in improving literacy in primary schools in Nagekeo district. Not only does it allow students to engage in active reading, but they find the joy in the activities too. Now, they have more options in what to read based on their levelling and can join in four different reading activities conducted by their teachers.

As the enthusiasm is increasing each day, the school principal, Ms Bergita, find that innovation is another important key in maintaining the students’ motivation in reading and sustaining the livelihood of the library. Therefore, she initiates a collaboration with teachers and librarian to organize effective literacy programs. The first innovation is parent engagement program in which parents accompany their children in joining reading activities in the library. This activity is named Reading Week which has started since July 2022 and has been consistently being done once in a month. As a result, parents have become more aware about their children progress and the importance of literacy development. While for the students, they have become more confident since they can do the reading activities with their parents, and they feel cared for by their parents. Interestingly, this Reading Week has been adopted and implemented by other child friendly libraries at school partners of TBP in Nagekeo district. How cool!

Another innovation initiated by Ms Bergita is school literacy competition. This is conducted in every language month with several competitions ranging from reading poetry, short story writing, fast reading to other competitions related to literacy and numeracy. The goal of this program is to increase students’ reading interest, improving students’ writing skills, and to inspire students to visit the library and read more often.

As the leader of the school, Ms Bergita hopes that their school library can be utilized as much as possible by all SDI Wudu’s students. She says, “Through these innovations, I really hope that all students can take advantage of this facility well so that it can be a stock of knowledge for your higher education.”