>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Music ] >> My name is Chhatra Bahadur Khatri. I work in rural education in [inaudible], Nepal. I'm involved in [inaudible] Nepal since last two years. I work as a program director. I oversee all the programs offered in Nepal. [inaudible], Nepal has been working in Nepal since 1991 as a non-profit organization, and [inaudible] Nepal started as community libraries to improve the literacy of the peoples and to change the language of the community people in the Nepal. So, it is useful to all community peoples naturally are reading and writing, and we believe that community library is not only the house of books, but it is the, it is the starting point of the special things in community development. So, we also do some programs and training sources to the community, and that is some sort of [inaudible] are using the libraries. And some programs we established after the setting up the community library. Once the library is established, we provide a need basis trainings and some programs, and we give the training to the women. We focus for them, a literacy program, a literacy program and education program because education is the basic things and fundamental thing to do within the community, and we focus the literacy programs. Similarly, we focus for the women development programs, women involved in the programs because it's still [inaudible] and 43% of the women in the Nepal are illiterate until now. And as the social norms, their community women and builders [phonetic] are not encouraged to read and write, and they, even they are not allowed to go out, outside. So, we focus for women involvement also. And another thing is that we focus for the [inaudible] because icity [phonetic] is generally is across working teams, and we also provide icity [inaudible] the community people for providing the email, Internet, and some basic training of the community free of cost. These are the main program and a very important this practice we are doing is that practical answer programs, practical answer programs helps to communities access to the information, knowledge, and the technology, and they get to answer what they are feeling. We provide the response of the other voices. These are the main programs. We have raised to 1.9 people suffered in Nepals through 56 community libraries, and we have produced 124 villages of Nepal, and we have at least to 29 districts out of the 75 districts, and this where programs are library, community library programs are designed to solve whole the community, and we give service to all levels of the peoples. Besides that, we have also some focus programs to women empowerment, as I already mentioned, and children and marginalized people. People are, we will be behind some in some villages, the people are not in [inaudible]. So, we also progress for the marginalized people. This literacy program and [inaudible] program, as well as the factory [phonetic] lesson program has a help to be their community library, very important, and people are coming to need our, need support to come to libraries to read and write. They come for and learn something, and they come for to get some answer of their [inaudible]. So, the credibility of their community life has been increased, and the people are more committed to visiting the library because of these programs, and we want to see a well-informed society in Nepal, and there are more than 4000 villages about to have literacy, a few villages. So, we want to make a library one place, one community library in Nepal. That is our vision. But we want to position that, the [inaudible], because community library is a, that is [inaudible] access for developments and centers for their knowledge, and it is one of the starting point of their community development. So, we want to build more community libraries as fast as possible, and then we also want to establish the sustaining enterprises to sustain the community libraries because it cannot be sustained without, themselves. So, we have also a project that we establish sustaining enterprises together with the community library. And this way we want to establish community library in the future, and we also want to expand our ICDs [inaudible] in the community libraries, and we also want to expand all the practically [inaudible] lines of programs. That's why we need the community library, build the community library using the very effective way, and we also are thinking that what would be the innovative idea to inform the local people to our city in the future. We are always looking for that also. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at www.loc.gov.