A university student in central Vietnam’s Thua Thien- Hue Province has run a sidewalk library for free, while many students of an elementary school in Ho Chi Minh City have read voraciously from their school’s book closets in the past three years.

Every Sunday afternoon in the past three months, a group of youth spread out raincoats at a corner of the Thua Thien- Hue Province’s Culture, Information Center’s yard and neatly arrange over 300 books on the coats.

The lush trees provide shade for the youngsters, mostly university students, who intently read books at the sidewalk library and borrow them home for free.

According to Nguyen Thi Nhu Quynh- a tourism major at Hue University, the makeshift library is a rendezvous for poor students who are keen on reading books.

She shared she frequents the place and borrows books on soft skills which are rarely found in her school’s library.

The books range from literature, culture to those offering soft skills.

Huynh Van Do, a junior at the Hue University Of Medicine and Pharmacy, shared he loves reading since a young age.

He then came up with the idea of sharing his passion with his peers by gathering his own and friends’ books and offering them for free reading.

His library originally had around 100 books, but after three months, the amount of books has been raised to over 300 from others’ donation.

Book lovers also come to the library to make friends and exchange opinions on their favorite books.   “Reading books is such a beneficial pastime. Though my library remains in its preliminary phase, I’m really happy that readers still come to borrow books on rainy days,” Do shared.

In a similar vein, many students from Tran Hung Dao Elementary School in HCMC’s District 1 have keenly read books from the school’s mobile book closets in the past three years. The two closets are pushed by a group of fifth graders to the front yard at the start of break time.

Apart from playing games, many children also indulge in their reading hobby by picking the books they like and read during the break time.

As the break time runs out, students neatly put the books away and push the two closets back to a school office.

Bui Duy Phuong, the school principal, said the book closets are meant to nurture students’ reading habit since a tender age, as the closets, placed right in the front yard, make the books more readily accessible to the kids than those at the library.

His school bought most of the books, with the remainder donated by the students themselves.

Phuong added the students keep the books carefully and no single book has gone missing so far.