HT's Bag of Books filling up fast

Parents and schoolchildren from across Delhi and NCR are contributing heartily to Bag of Books, Hindustan Times' book-collection initiative launched earlier this month. Vasudha Singh reports.

Parents and schoolchildren from across Delhi and NCR are contributing heartily to Bag of Books, Hindustan Times' book-collection initiative launched earlier this month.

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

Under the new initiative, citizens of Delhi and NCR have been invited to give their old books — both textbooks and storybooks — a new lease of life by donating them to underprivileged children.

HT has partnered with 84 schools across Delhi and NCR to collect these books, which will be distributed through partner NGOs Pratham and Goonj. The list of schools is available at www.youreadtheylearn.com. Parents and children are invited to donate.

At 45 books, Ananya Chowdhary, a Class 4 student at Lotus Valley International School in Noida, has made one of the highest contributions. "I love my books. But now that I am done reading them, I want others to enjoy them too. I am happy to give them to children who cannot buy these books on their own."

Likewise, Muskan Lather, a Class 8 student at Sri Venkateshwar International School, Dwarka, says, "It is a great feeling to donate books to someone who needs them more than I do. It's our duty to help underprivileged children. In today's India, some children are forced to work at a very early age. I feel it is the birth right of children to be able to study and learn." Lather has already donated 38 books and hopes to give more soon.

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 copy of the newspaper towards creating a corpus to fund the education of over 10,000 children during the year.