Fill HT's bag of books in Saket this weekend

Following the tremendous response to 'Bag of Books', Hindustan Times' book-collection drive, a second leg of this initiative has been started from Friday at the Select Citywalk mall in Saket. Vasudha Singh reports.

Following the tremendous response to 'Bag of Books', Hindustan Times' book-collection drive, a second leg of this initiative has been started from Friday at the Select Citywalk mall in Saket.

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Parents and schoolchildren who wish to donate textbooks and storybooks can hand them over to the volunteers between 10am and 7.30pm. This drive will run until August 23.

'Bag of Books' is a part of HT's 'You Read, They Learn' initiative, which has already helped send 2,574 underprivileged children to school.

Under the initiative, citizens of Delhi and NCR are invited to give their old books a new lease of life by donating them to underprivileged children. HT, through its PACE (Partnerships for Action in Education) programme, partnered with almost 100 schools across Delhi and NCR to collect these books. The response from schools, students and their parents has been tremendous.

The books will be distributed through partner NGOs Pratham and Goonj.

The children who have contributed to the bag of books are delighted. Having donated 25 books, Avni Tyagi, a Class VIII student of Sri Venkateshwar International School (Dwarka), said, "My mother is an MCD school teacher and she told me about the condition of poor girls who help their mothers in household chores and also at their workplaces. I hope to be able to make a difference in their lives."

Prabhat Kashyap, a Class VI student at ASN International School, Mayur Vihar, handed out more than 30 books. "I feel very satisfied after donating my books as many underprivileged children can have the advantage of reading these books and enhancing their knowledge", he said.

The 'You Read, They Learn' initiative was launched in April, to help educate underprivileged children. As a part of this initiative, HT has been contributing a part of the cover price of every Metro edition of the newspaper towards creating a corpus to fund the education of over 10,000 children during the year.