Bansa Community Library

In this video we asked our members what they love most about their Free Community Library. From reading newspapers to studying for hours, or even just enjoying the toys, reading comics, everyone agrees—it's like a second home at Bansa Community Library!

At Bansa Library, books often become the beginning of conversations that travel far beyond their pages. Around the same table, children, young people, and adults come together to listen, question, disagree, reflect, and share experiences from their own lives. In rural areas, spaces like these become even more important because there are so few places where people across generations can simply gather to think, speak, and learn together. Outside of schools or homes, there are very limited public spaces that encourage open conversations, curiosity, and collective reflection. This is why free community libraries become so important. They create accessible, welcoming spaces where anyone, regardless of age, background, or income, can walk in, belong, and participate. Libraries slowly become much more than rooms with books, they become spaces of dialogue, imagination, confidence, and community. #FreeLibrariesForAll #RightToRead #BansaCommunityLibrary #AccessToBooks

At Bansa Library, Mother’s Day is not just about celebration, it is about creating space. A space where women from the village step out of routines and responsibilities for a little while and simply sit together. They talk, laugh, listen, share stories, and slowly rediscover time for themselves. For many women here, the library has become more than a room full of books. It has become a place of friendship, comfort, and belonging. A place where stories are read aloud, conversations unfold without judgement, and afternoons are spent together in warmth and care. Some come with their children, some come shy and quiet at first, and some stay back long after the reading circle ends, continuing conversations that rarely find space elsewhere. This Mother’s Day, we celebrated not only mothers, but the gentle community that forms when women gather around stories, around each other, and around the simple joy of being seen and heard. Because sometimes, a community library becomes one of the few places where women are allowed to pause, breathe, and belong. #BansaLibrary #MothersDay #CommunityLibrary #WomenReaders #LibrariesChangeLives #RuralLibraries #ReadingTogether

Dear friends of Bansa Library, sharing with you, with much love, our Monthly Update for April from Bansa Library. April was a full and tender month at Bansa. The summer arrived in full force, but so did our community, showing up for one another in the most beautiful ways. Our Comic Corner that has quickly become a favourite among our younger readers, took pop-up library sessions out into the villages around Bansa, and watched the women of our community pick up their pens at our Hindi Writing Workshop, writing, singing, and claiming the space on their own terms. Read the entire report here- bansacommunitylibrary.org/wp-content/upl… In numbers: 714 books issued, 430+ visitors, 193 new books added, and 45 new members welcomed into the Bansa family, including 16 competitive exam aspirants preparing for life-changing opportunities right here in their village. If you would like to support our aspirants directly, even one book from our Amazon Wishlist goes straight into the hands of someone building their future through their own quiet, determined effort. amazon.in/hz/wishlist/ls… And do follow us on instagram.com/bansacommunity… to stay close to the everyday life of the library. We would love to have you along. Happy Reading

For a long time, reading here was tied almost entirely to survival. Books meant textbooks, guidebooks, exam papers, and the pressure to 'study' for marks, jobs, and competitive exams. For many children and young people in villages around Bansa, access to books beyond academics simply did not exist. There were very few spaces where reading could be slow, joyful, curious, or personal. What we are witnessing now at Bansa Community Library is a quiet but meaningful shift. Children who once came only looking for study material now sit together turning pages of storybooks, comics, picture books, and novels. They are reading not because someone asked them to, but because they want to know what happens next. Conversations are forming around characters, ideas, and imagination. The library is slowly changing the meaning of reading itself, from a task connected only to exams, into something that can also bring comfort, excitement, wonder, and companionship. This change may look small in a photograph, but in communities where access to books has always been limited, it is deeply significant. A reading culture does not appear overnight. It grows page by page, circle by circle, child by child. #FreeLibrary #BooksForAll #RightToRead

The beauty of Bansa Library holding a place for discussion that goes beyond books and reading. #SafeSpace #CommunityLibrary

In a village where voices are often held back, this circle becomes a rare, powerful space, where young people and community members sit as equals, speak without fear, and listen without judgement. Here, conversations don’t stay within books. They move into real lives, into questions of identity, society, fairness, and the everyday realities people carry but rarely get to share. Disagreements happen, perspectives collide, but something deeper is built each time: confidence, empathy, and the courage to have a voice. Bansa Library isn’t just creating readers. It’s creating a space where people can finally be heard. #FreeLibrary #Discussion #SafeSpace #Readers

A free community library is never just about books. It’s where children walk in with curiosity and walk out with confidence. Where stories are read aloud, shared, questioned, and lived together. Where afternoons turn into circles of laughter, quiet focus, and small discoveries that stay. It’s a space where access is not limited by distance, money, or background, where anyone can belong, learn, and imagine more for themselves. At Bansa Library, this is what a library looks like every day: not silent rooms, but living, breathing spaces of possibility, where a community comes together, one story at a time. #BansaLibrary #FreeLibrary #RightToRead #Books #Reading

A circle forms, a comic opens, and just like that, the common room of Bansa Library softens into stories. There’s something gentle about this moment: heads leaning closer, eyes following each page, laughter arriving at the same time. The librarian reads, but the story belongs to everyone in the circle. This is how reading begins, not as a task, but as a shared joy. A quiet, growing love for books, held together in small, warm moments like these. Our comic corner is one such space, where children return, sit a little closer, and find themselves in stories, again and again. We’re deeply thankful to The Kutumb Foundation and Free Libraries Network for making this possible, helping us create a corner where stories are not just read, but felt, shared, and cherished. #ComicCorner #FreeLibrary #RightToRead

Monthly Update Report for March If one word defined March at Bansa Community Library, it was community, in the truest, most lived sense of the word. This month, we watched women walk through our doors with new ease and make the space their own. We watched aspirants prepare late into the evening for the opportunity of their lifetime. And we watched, quietly moved, as student leaders and older aspirants began sitting beside the younger children on their own accord, helping them with homework, reading, and fluency. Nobody designed this. It simply began, the way the best things often do. - A few highlights from the month: Launched our Hindi Writing Workshop with Lampshade Writers, a six-week space under our Women Readership Enhancement Project where women are learning to write and tell their own stories, many for the very first time. - Issued 893 books, welcomed 670+ visitors, and added 33 new children and 8 new aspirants to the Bansa family. - Received 145 new books to support our growing community of learners and exam aspirants. To everyone who has walked with us, donated books, volunteered, or simply cheered us on from afar, thank you. Bansa Community Library is not just a space with books. It is a living, breathing hub of creativity, learning, and human connection, and it is everything it is because of you. Read the full update here- bansacommunitylibrary.org/wp-content/upl… Order books for us from Amazon- amazon.in/hz/wishlist/ls… Help us ensure that women don’t have to choose between distance, duty, and the right to read. Your support can bring books, safe reading spaces, and opportunities closer to those who need them most. Contribute here- pages.razorpay.com/RightToReadFor… Read and bloom where you are planted. #BansaCommunityLibrary #RuralLibrary #FreeLibrary #CommunityLibrary #ReadingForAll #WomenReaders #HindiWriting #LibrariesChangeLives #Hardoi #UttarPradesh #ArunaMithileshFoundation

At Bansa Library, books don’t always wait on shelves. Sometimes, they travel. In nearby mazras and villages, where women and children cannot easily reach our physical space, the library finds its way to them. A courtyard, a shaded corner, a borrowed space, for a few hours, each becomes a place to read, listen, and imagine. Stories are read aloud. Little ones lean in, wide-eyed, asking what happens next. Older children pick up books and read to the younger ones. Women talk, sometimes about the story, sometimes about their day, sometimes about things they've never said out loud before. There's laughter. There are games, antakshari between pages, quick rounds of guess-the-word, silly rhymes that have everyone giggling. Someone always wants to draw. Someone always wants one more story. These pop-up sessions are small and temporary. But in the middle of an afternoon, in a village that rarely sees books, they quietly open up a whole world, especially for those often left out of reading spaces because of where they live or what their day demands of them. At Bansa Community Library, we strongly believe that access should never depend on distance. If they can’t come to the library, the library goes to them. #FreeLibary #LibraryForAll #RightToRead #BooksForAll #BansaPopUpLibrary

कुछ लोग कहते हैं तो कुछ करके दिखाते हैं ऐसे ही @BansaLibrary की साथ, जो कहा वो करके दिखाया बहुत शानदार

Grammar classes have been quietly shaping young minds at Library for a long time now. Over time, we’ve seen children become more expressive, more confident in reading and speaking, and more willing to participate, both inside and outside the classroom. What begins as a grammar lesson slowly turns into a space for voice, imagination, and self-belief. What makes this even more powerful is the integration of digital learning. Through online sessions, children in a small village like ours are able to connect with educators beyond their immediate surroundings, breaking barriers of geography and access. It opens up new worlds, new methods of learning, and new possibilities they may not have otherwise encountered. With incredible consistency and care, the Look Forward Foundation continues to show up for our primary group learners, week after week, building confidence, curiosity, and a strong foundation in language. #GrammarClass #FreeLibrary

A Big Thank You — from Bansa, with love. Over two beautiful days at our 4th Fundraising Book Sale, hosted by the wonderful @kunzum Books at GK II, 2,430 pre-loved books found new homes, over 600 of you walked through the doors, and together we raised ₹2,27,742 for the Women Readership Enhancement Program at Bansa Community Library. We're still a little overwhelmed, honestly. To everyone who came, bought, browsed, or simply told a friend, thank you. To those who donated books, who shared our posts at odd hours, who stood in line and stayed late, thank you. And to Kunzum, for opening their doors to us, again, thank you. The funds raised will go directly into powering our Women Readership Enhancement Program, bringing more books, more sessions, and more space for the women of Bansa to read, reflect, and grow. Missed the April sale? Don't worry, we have another one planned for the first week of July. To get updates, fill the form here: forms.gle/uWydyj6Z6wZQov… Here's to a community that's growing, learning, and making a difference, one book at a time. #BansaCommunityLibrary #FundraisingBookSale #KunzumBooks #WomenReadership #CommunityLibrary #BookSaleDelhi #PreLovedBooks #ReadMoreGiveMore #FreeLibrary

Day 1 of the Bansa Library Fundraising Book Sale was incredible, Delhi showed up and showed OUT. Now we’re back with FRESH books for the final day. 📅 April 5 | 11 am to 08 pm 📍Kunzum Books, GK II, Delhi Come find your next favorite. Support our Women Readership Enhancement Program. Be part of the movement. See you tomorrow?

Bansa Library Fundraising Booksale Delhi showed up. The love, the energy, the belief in our mission, it was everything. Now, we’re back with fresh books for the final day. Tomorrow at Kunzum Books, GK II. April 5. Your support fuels rural literacy, women’s empowerment at Bansa. More details- eventbrite.com/e/bansa-librar… #FundraisingBookSale #FreeBooks #BookSale

Fundraising Book Sale If you love books AND making an impact, we have the perfect weekend for you. This April 4-5, Bansa Library is hosting a Fundraising Book Sale at Kunzum Books, GK II, thousands of titles waiting to find their next homes. Whether you're hunting for that one book that's been on your list or discovering something entirely new, every purchase you make directly funds our Women Readership Enhancement Program in rural communities. RSVP now- eventbrite.com/manage/events/… Imagine a woman stepping out of her home for the first time, walking into a library, opening a book, and discovering a whole world she never knew existed. Imagine the quiet courage it takes to claim that space, that knowledge, that voice. Imagine libraries becoming places where women read, dream, question, and become. That's what your support makes possible. Come browse curated collections, connect with fellow book lovers, and know that you're contributing to something meaningful. Stories deserve homes. Books deserve readers. Communities deserve access to books. 📅 11 AM–8 PM, Saturday & Sunday 📍 Kunzum Books, GK II. Bring a friend. Spread the word. Let's build a community of readers together. 🧡📚✨ #BookSale #Fundraising #BookLovers #DelhiNCR #WomenReadership #CommunityLibrary #RuralEducation

Delhi, we’re coming to you with something special. We are hosting our 4th Fundraising Book Sale at Kunzum Books, and this is more than just a sale, it’s a chance to be part of a growing reading movement from rural Uttar Pradesh. Browse through a thoughtfully curated collection of preloved books, ranging from just ₹30 to ₹250, including hardcovers and limited editions. Every book you pick carries a story, and every purchase you make helps us build many more, supporting first-generation learners and strengthening our Women Readership Enhancement Program at the library. If you’ve ever believed in the power of books to change lives, this is your moment to show up. Come spend a slow, meaningful day surrounded by stories, conversations, and community. 📍 Kunzum Books, GK-II, Delhi 🗓 4th & 5th April | 11 AM – 8 PM 🎟 RSVP by scanning the QR code on the poster or through the link- eventbrite.com/e/bansa-librar… Bring your friends, tag your Delhi people, and help us spread the word. The more, the merrier, and the bigger the impact. #FundraisingBookSale #FreeBooks #BookSale #BansaLibrary #KunzumBooks

Some of the most special moments at Bansa Library unfold like this. For our primary group members, this is often the highlight of their day, when our student leaders sit beside them, gently working through homework, strengthening reading fluency, and creating a space where no child is left behind. This is the quiet power of a free community library, where learning is shared, support is consistent, and every child, regardless of where they come from, finds the time, attention, and encouragement they deserve. #FreeLibrary #BansaLibrary #RightToRead