New Delhi: Five young students from Delhi and Jaipur are making a difference to the lives of children on the streets. They recently launched a campaign “Donate a Book, Make a Friend!” to help poverty-stricken children, who cannot afford to buy books.
From novels and general knowledge books to Class 5 onwards school books and CAT (Common Admission Test) preparation books, the range of books being received by them is vast. Some children have even contributed magazines, plus crayons, school bags and toys.
In 2011, the team had started an online drive “Share A Smile” that received a huge response. The aim was to share learning opportunities with the youth from different cities and explore and reflect on their experiences.
This led them to believe that they could do something more constructive for the less fortunate children.
Thus, Ashutosh Nandwana, Nandan Singh Lalwal, Sundeep Choudhary, Vivek Kakkar and Dolly Munjal – all friends, decided to create a library for such children. The team came across many children from different communities, villages, red light areas and slums, who wanted to study.
Ashutosh says: “Most street children work and the common job is rag-picking. We realised that whenever children found any paper that contained colourful pictures, they would leave work and begin to see the contents.
“They would sift through garbage to find some more such pages and show them to each other.”
The group decided to give them an opportunity to fulfil their longing for books with colourful images.
Sundeep says: “For a start, the collection of books has been kept at a centre in Jaipur and are made available to any child – whether he/she wants to flip the pages and see photographs or prefers to read. The next step would be to open a centre in New Delhi.”
The team hopes the involvement of people to donate books will rise gradually, as they have been getting enquiries from many people in both Jaipur and Delhi asking about their collection centres.
“We are considering the process of collection arrangements because it is difficult for a lot of people to bring the books to our centre.
“And at the same time we intend to rope in NGOs working with street kids to spread awareness among them about our centre and the possibility of the children getting all kind of educational support from us,” Ashutosh reflects.
“As of now there are no plans of a mobile library, but the new development is that we are now creating a learning centre wherein we will hold free regular classes in English, computers and life skills for adolescents,” Sundeep said.
“The books we are collecting will be for their use as well. We are considering approaching children from government schools to visit our centre to avail of the facilities,” he added.
Dolly is thinking farther. “Soon, we plan to identify certain communities and will send our interns to educate children in their own surroundings. For this we are trying to collaborate with some organisations that will work according to our specifications,” she said.
Coming from well-off families, all five students are well educated and realise the value of education. However, unlike politicians, who only harp about education for all and formulate policies, these students are setting an example for those who have the will to work for social causes.
Ashutosh says: “A lot of children run away from homes and become child labourers. Some have gone to schools in villages and know to read and write.
“Through this initiative of a library, we intend to inculcate in them the sense of pride of being literate. And shall encourage them to resume studies that will enable them to escape the poverty trap.”
Sundeep adds: “The library would be open to all children, irrespective of caste and class, as the spirit of learning is important for all.”
Child psychologist Smriti Raina: “Unlike earlier times, most teachers do not encourage children to go to the library, as they feel it comes in way of lessons. And parents are to be blamed equally. I have noticed this strange aversion in many parents to paying a high price for a book. But they do not mind spending an exorbitant amount to gift the child a mobile phone or toys.
“Also, the pressures of modern life tend to force parents to look for the easy way out as far as their children are concerned.
“They tell the children to either watch a movie or television, which takes less effort than sitting with them and reading a story from a book. And to hide their guilt they blame it on the high prices of good books.”
• Compared to the pre-television generation, children today read less and the number of reading children have reduced drastically.
• The Internet and social networking has added to the drop and children would rather sit with their mobile phones and IPads than read a book in spare time.
