Inspiring the love of reading in children with free fairy tales

Now celebrating 10 years and 10 libraries, Vnet's "Fairy Tale Library" CSR project continues to make a positive difference to the development of young minds.

The founder and chairman of Vnet Capital, Narong Intanate, has long been determined to instil a love of reading in children, inspire them to be imaginative, and help them understand the importance of spending their free time wisely.

To establish a reading habit, he believes children should be introduced to books from an early age. Introducing them to fairy tales, which every child loves, is a great way to get them reading voluntarily from the start.

It was this in mind that Narong established Fairy Tale Library Project in 2007. The project aims to build a library of fairy tales that can be handed to selected primary schools, beginning with one school chosen per province.

The project is operated by volunteer employees of The Value Systems, a distribution company founded by Narong before he became chairman of Vnet. Now Vnet has set up a corporate social responsibility (CSR) unit dedicated to ensuring the project's success.

Fairy Tale Library is a unique facility for kindergarten and primary schools in Thailand. It is specially designed according to effective learning environment considerations and with the natural growth of young children in mind. The shelves of each Fairy Tale Library are well stocked with over 5,000 titles and there are comfortable cushions to sit on.

CSR FOCUS

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- Editor's note
- Stimulating sustainability
- Levelling the playing field
- Inspiring the love of reading in children with free fairy tales
- Waste not, want not
- Coaxing turtle conservation out of its shell
- Giving nature a helping hand

In 2009, the Fairly Tale Library added an academic library and a computer corner, making the libraries even more relevant and useful to children and teachers alike.

Each library comprises two zones. There's the Fairy Tale Library for children aged 3-12 years which, besides the books, includes a brick corner, a puppet theatre, and a wall on which the children are invited to paint and draw. The second zone, comprising an academic library of books categorised by genre, is staffed by a librarian and includes computer corners.

So far, Vnet has built ten Fairy Tale Libraries for ten schools. Consistent with its One-School-One-Province policy, only primary schools that offer classes from kindergarten to grade 6 children and that have 300-650 pupils are considered. Also, the selected schools must have suitable free space on which to build the new library. Moreover, the school's management team and teachers must manage the Fairy Tale Library properly.

"When considering a school's application, we ask them to describe how they would make use of the library if they were selected for one," explains Narong.

In the years since the project's inception, the schools that have been selected have reported that they have derived great benefits from their libraries.

The selected schools are granted a budget for a new library building, or to renovate their current library. After being stocked with titles to get started, the libraries get more books over the course of each year.

To ensure everything goes smoothly, Vnet's CSR team visits each of the schools on an annual basis.

In addition, Vnet sponsors teachers to attend seminars at least once a year, and students from each selected school can win scholarships if they win the "Love Reading" or "Most Imaginative" award. The prize for the Love Reading award winners is a 1,000 baht scholarship and a full-day visit to Kidzania, Bangkok's interactive role-playing theme park. Each school is allowed to set their own criteria for selecting the award winners and scholarship recipients.