Library available to children left behind in urban village: a grass-root library operated by social welfare organization

Abstract: Fengyang library is located in Kanglu community, a concentration of fabric manufacture that holds over a hundred thousand migrant workers. Over 80 percent of readers in Fengyang library are children whose parents are too busy with fabric business to take care of them. The library provides these neglected children with reading space, books, and reading activities throughout their extracurricular time, which not only accompany them for their parents, but also expose to them knowledge they can’t get from school. This poster presents the case of Fengyang library demonstrating how library works with social welfare organization to promote reading and knowledge availability. Far for children in Kanglu community to gain access to Haizhu public library and inadequate staffing for the library to reach out to the children, it collaborates with STARS YOUTH DEVELOPMENT CENTER, a social welfare organization dedicated to promoting reading to children in rural areas. While migrant children pervasively feel lonely and lost in the unfamiliar city, Fengyang library becomes a spiritual community for the children in Kanglu, a wonderland with knowledge, company and inclusion in their lives neglected yet longing for care, encouraging them to participate actively in the community and fit into urban life. Keywords: grass-root library, social organization, migrant children