The impact of BLV's Book Library Program

The BLV Team has spent the first three months of 2018 for the evaluation work. We visited the first two secondary schools in Tien Hai and Tien Hiep village in HaNam where we gave books last year. In addition to the report from the school about their use and manage of the books, we also distributed questionnaires to 390 students of these two schools. Interviews of the teachers and students were also conducted. 

 According to the report submitted by Tien Hiep school, the donated books were borrowed and returned 2,136 times. This is recorded in a notebook managed by the librarian. 100% of teacher and 75% of the students often borrow and read books from the library. This is thanks to the school's effort to introduce new books to teachers and the students through activities such as Books Reading Day. The teachers  often encourage students to read books and recommend what books to read to understand their lesson better. Tien Hiep's library is opened from Monday to Saturday. Students can read at the library and borrow books to take home.

As a result, students have visited the library and borrow books more regularly. Answering our questionnaire, most of the students have expressed that the new books are very useful for them in their studying as well as daily life. They learnt more about countries in the world, natural phenomenon and environment around them. 

They also learnt about empathy towards others and how to behave 

Many students found that the new books have helped them to understand what they learnt in their lectures on a deeper level.

Teachers and students from both schools told us that reading literature books helped the students to write better essay, resulting in higher grades. Following the curriculum, the teacher can only introduce an excerpt of a literature work. The teacher will recommend the students to read the whole literature work in order to have deeper understanding that will help them to write better essay.   

Not only students, the teachers have also borrowed books to read at home for reference. Literature teachers borrow literature books. Math teachers borrow math books to enrich their knowledge. There are teachers who also borrow living skills books to read at home to teach their children.

We are very pleased to know these first results of our Book Library program. We will continue evaluate our Books program in other schools in Ha Nam and Ba Vi in the coming months of this year.