I remember the day when I saw a little boy reading a story book during tiffin break I was drinking tea. I went forward and asked the boy what was he reading, ‘Farmer and the king’ he said. His excitement and engrossment towards reading made me think and wonder how great it would be if all the kids were interested in reading as well. Then I discussed this issue amongst ourselves and finalized that we need a library in our school so that all kids have access to reading books and explore their imaginations. After few days a female student came to us and asked what the meaning of magnitude is. I was surprised and asked her where she found this word. She said she read it in the encyclopedia book. Since we teach underprivileged kids who barely have access to any book, but to hear such strong definitions from them made me think hard. I realized then that if a book can change the way a little girl thinks then what can it do to all the children of the nation. That is when we decided that we can create a project and branch out this availability of books across the city.
Reading emphasizes the imagination within a child. Everybody has a reader in them. The only variable how well have it grown and what better way to nourish it than reading books. So we came up with the name of our project “Grow your Reader”. Because we strongly believe that today’s reader will be tomorrow’s leader where his knowledge will define his social values.
It was tough decision at the beginning because buying books was expensive. So we were thinking of another way, that’s when good conditioned second hand books came into our thoughts. We started requesting people to donate books to us and also donation for buying books on Facebook. We were surprised to find a response and thus began our project ‘Grow your Reader’. And spread our books to five different stations. Currently we have around 2000 readers. However our biggest challenge currently is that we have more no. of readers than books. Everyday our readers are increasing but comparatively our books aren’t increasing as much .Because we still have limited no. of donators.
Renowned daily newspapers of our country also featured my projects. I would also like to share with you my friends.
Sometimes I feel motivated to share these with others. Thanks a lot for having me.