Basic Research Education and Development Society (BREAD Society)

Basic Research Education and Development Society (BREAD) was established with the mission to inculcate the thirst for knowledge among students from the marginalized sections of society. This helps to achieve a child's full potential for the good of the individual and society.

The Library Program was started in 2009 as children going to government schools had no access to books other than text books. With a view to inculcating reading habits among them, BREAD has set up 1024 in the past 9 years, thereby benefitting almost 4 lakh students annually.

An Expert Committee selects books of interest to children falling in the 9-15 years age group. Each BREAD Library consists of 600-650 books and has a corpus of Rs 10,000 to distribute prizes to children. BREAD selects government schools securing six or more National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship (NMMS) awards in a year, for setting up its libraries. Donors can sponsor a library for Rs35,000. A donation of Rs2,000 enables it to replenish 80 books in its existing libraries. To sustain the interest of students, it adds 80-100 new books to its existing libraries on a rotation basis.

Responsibility of managing the libraries is given to a teacher by the Headmaster. The teacher in turn, selects three responsible students from each class to manage the library during their library period. This helps the students develop team spirit, leadership and managerial skills and also relieves the teachers from the burden of additional work of managing the libraries. BREAD has set up libraries in 617 NMMS schools and felicitated 1,772 Headmasters and teachers for their selfless service.

BREAD distributes prizes (10 for each school) to students for the best write-ups since write-ups are conclusive proof of students having read the books. During FY17, 550 students from 67 schools were given dictionaries as prizes for best write-ups.