Hi all,
I have not written for quite a few days. First let me quickly summarize what went since I posted my last blog entry:
1. Presentation at NEIIM-2010 : The home library presentation during the Rural Development Session at NE India International Meet-2010 was a big success. The plenary session was attended by some of the prominent scientists, economists, politicians, journalists and social activists of my state. Everybody liked the slides; many asked me questions after the session, some willing to donate books and some wants to start a library. All went well.
2. Addition of new steel rack: The Library bought a new steel rack, designed specifically for book storing purpose. We did quite reshuffle of books -children books and adult books are on different racks, a few old magazines are eliminated etc.
3. Addition of 150+ books: We bought a few assamese classics from Guwahati Book Fair; A few people donated a number of books. So recently there was an addition of 100+ books to the library. In the donor list I must mention Sridhar Adapa (Dev Manager, Microsoft), Shwetal(Business Communication, Microsoft) and Mina Baideu(Social Activist, Agia).
4. SWARANG Library-on a halt: There seems to be some political issues with the orphanage where SWARANG library is supposed to be established. I myself visit Kokrajhar district and gave a presentation to the principal, but due to BTC election and different reasons the process is getting delayed. To add to that Dipak had to fly to Delhi- so all these reasons make SWARANG library is on halt for time being. I am feeling sad.
5. Trust Registration at Guwahati: Again in this legal case, there seems to be some knowledge gap between India Trust Act,1882 understanding and Nayandeep Nath, our advocate for the cause. The district level registration is already done though. However, I am taking charge of this issue, and will solve this in my next home visit.
6. CSIM Certification Course: To learn more about non-profit organization, I have joined a certification course at CSIM, Hyderabad. I have projected my home library concept there and it has been appreciated by different people. I am supposed to do a project here on the same concept. This will add tremendous value to the library concept.
7. "Share your journey with the society": I presented the Home Library Concept at the above mentioned initiative at Microsoft Campus, organized by 'Microsoft Hyderabad Social Service Group'. I and Somak unveiled the trust website first time to public.
8. Trust website is complete: All credit goes to Somak Bhattacharya- our site http://mnmtrust.org/ is ready and live. We have implemented AJAX for quick load of pages.
9. Cancellation of 2nd 4-monthly meet: We had planned but later forced to cancel second 4-monthly meet of the library owing to the growing tension of the Rabha Hasong movement at my place. Many people were killed in violence; we did postpone twice, ultimately decided to call it off.
10. First anniversary celebration: I am going home on 13th May to celebrate the first year of the library. Planning is on. Please give me suggestions, if you have any.
Logical Halt: Now, coming to the main point, as mentioned in the title line. First let me be clear that I am not halting the Home Library Expansion, but only this blog. There are two reasons:
A. After the site is up and we are twitting regularly with all the library and trust updates, maintaining this blog is adding redundancy to the activities. So, I am trying to bring efficiency here.
B. On personal front, I am on another goal of my life and have started a new blog to write down my experiences. So, I afraid I will not be able to give time to this one.
So, here we go - There will not be any new post in this blog, at least for a couple of months. But this is just a halt, we are planning to have a separate blog section in the trust website; Then this blog will be back again! And that time in a complete different form and outlook.
Keep waiting...till then, anyway, we are 0n http://mnmtrust.org/