Books by bike, a mobile library for kids

He started his programme, called “Book and Me,” three years ago, and it has become very popular among the children. “There are some kids who hadn't seen even a children's storybook until I went to their villages,” he said.

Colombo: During his leisure time, Mahinda Dasanayaka packs his motorbike with books and rides his mobile library across mostly muddy roads running through tea-growing mountain areas to underprivileged children in backward rural parts of Sri Lanka. Having witnessed the hardships faced by children whose villages have no library facilities, Dasanayaka was looking for ways to help them. Then he got the idea for his library on wheels.

He started his programme, called “Book and Me,” three years ago, and it has become very popular among the children. “There are some kids who hadn’t seen even a children’s storybook until I went to their villages,” he said.

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Dasanayaka, 32, works as a child protection officer for the government. On his off days — mostly during weekends — he rides his motorbike, which is fixed with a steel box to hold books, to rural villages and distributes the reading material to children free of charge. “The children are very keen and enthusiastic, they are eagerly waiting for me — always looking for new books,” Dasanayaka said by phone.

His programme is mainly centred in Kegalle, a mountainous region of the Indian Ocean island nation about 85 kilometres (52 miles) northeast of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, with poor villages scattered among tea plantations. He visits the villages once or twice a week to distribute the books. His collection includes about 3,000 books on a variety of subjects. “Boys mostly like to read detective stories such as Sherlock Holmes, while girls prefer to read youth novels and biographies,” he said. So far, he said, his program has benefited more than 1,500 children, as well as about 150 adults.