The rain has not fully stopped when World Vision's Mobil Sahabat Anak (meaning: children's friend car) mobile library arrives in Dukuh neighborhood in Kramatjati, East Jakarta, one Friday morning.

Driver and mobile library administration staff Pardi Martoredjo takes up his loudspeaker to announce their coming.

"Dear children the mobile library has arrived! Please join us and read books!" he booms several times.

Hearing the announcement, children call their friends to hurry up as they run toward the neighbourhood field where the library is parked.

Seconds later, nearly a dozen children have reached the car and already started choosing books to read. Numbers increase throughout the day. When the mobile library closes at 2 p.m., the number of visitors to the library is carefully recorded - 35 children.

Growing up in this disadvantaged urban community, these children have missed out on reading books all their lives. Sometimes they are unable to afford them, but just as often they are following local patterns of behaviour. With no strong culture of learning, almost every home has a television but very few contain books to read.

Novi Dwi Safitri (8), a third grade visitor to the library, says she once had a reading book but she does not know where it is now. With no other choice for entertainment, she spends morning, afternoon and evening in front of her family's television.

"I spend more time watching television than learning my school textbooks," said Novi.

Lita Suryani (10), fourth grader of elementary school, expresses her love of reading but says she has no solution for it because she, too, has no access to books. This is the third time the mobile library has visited her neighbourhood and she is very grateful.

The school system struggles to provide reading materials to Indonesian children too. Even in the capital Jakarta, not every school has a library. Public libraries are even more difficult to find. According to a recent media report, there are less than 3,000 public libraries - a very small number for a country with 230 million people.
 
To respond to urban children's need for reading, World Vision operates two mobile libraries with more than 2,000 reading books to serve children in five of World Vision's development areas in East and North Jakarta.

Students from pre-school to junior high come to spend a day in the presence of books, reading them, then returning them back to the bookshelf for others to enjoy.

 "I hope the mobile library come to this neighborhood more often so that I could read more books," says Lita.

Now Elan (8) and Nur (5), brother and sister, are approaching the van. These two do not attend school and cannot read. They usually help their parents look for used bottles and plastics, when other children go to school. Their parents are scavengers.

Elan and Nur are shy about joining the other children, but they are also curious. The arrival of the mobile library is a special moment, maybe even a turning point, for them.

A volunteer in the neighborhood tries to introduce letters to them, guiding them through the pages. Of course, the very short course does not give them much help in reading, but at least it gives the brother and sister a little joy and fun.

Tomorrow the van will park in a different field and a different group of children will come running. With between 25 and 150 children visiting each time, the mobile libraries have served thousands of children like Novi and Lita, Elan and Nur, since they started operating last September.

"Thank you for allowing me to visit the mobile library," says Nur when asked what she thinks of it all. "I like the books with a lot of colors and pictures."