Duygu Erol

 

ANKARA - Garbage collectors of Çankaya Municipality have opened a library in an old factory located in İmrahor Neighborhoodof Ankara’s Mamak district by collecting books from garbage.

 

Garbage collectors of Ankara’s Çankaya Municipality rebuilt an old brick factory built 45 years ago and turned it into a gathering center. There is a medical room, a directorate room, a health center, a rest room, a kitchen and cinema hall in the factory used by 600 workers and a corridor of the factory has been turned into a library. In the library, there are books collected from garbage by the workers and donated books. A database has been set up in the library for the workers to read the books at their homes and to take the books for their relatives. 

 

‘Our goal is to build a library for schools in villages’

 

Sema, one of the workers, stated that they had been supported by Unlimited Team when they began to form the library. She said the team sent books to schools in villages and they donated about 150-200 books to their library in summer. Sema said, “When the schools are on holiday, the people put the books next to garbage. Now we have more than 4,000 books in the library. We collected some of them from garbage and some of them were donated.” Stating that their goal is to have 5,000 books for the library, Sema also stated that they want to build libraries for schools in villages with the rest of books.

 

‘We have a mobile library project’

 

Saying that the workers spend their free time at the library, Sema added, “We did not expect to see so much demand except for the workers. Everyone likes the library. Achieving such a thing is really difficult and very meaningful. Our next project is to design a garbage truck as a mobile library and to donate books to the schools around Ankara.”