Karnataka NGO hands out free notebooks to poor kids

Despite the Government making efforts to ensure education for all children, there are still many who have to struggle in school due to lack of textbooks and notebooks. Stepping in to help such kids is Spandana Trust based in Mysuru, Karnataka.

For the last few years, the non-governmental organisation has been distributing free quality notebooks to the less privileged children and those studying in Government schools to help them in their education. This work is done under the NGO’s initiative, My Dream Book.

Explaining this, Abhinandan Urs, head of the Trust said that its main objective is to support children who can’t afford education due to lack of money. While the Government does provide free textbooks, many children don’t have notebooks.

This as per Urs is true about students in Government schools in rural areas and those whose parents are poor. This forces the children to manage with one or two notebooks in the entire academic year.

Till now, the Trust has distributed 25,000 notebooks among more than 5,000 students and has also covered 20 Government schools. The children of these schools are from Classes I to X.

Notebooks are collected from individual donors while many organisations also support the Trust’s endeavour.

Sharing details about the Trust’s roadmap, Urs said they were planning to start a circulating library. For this they will collect novels, books, magazines, journals and encyclopaedias which will be circulated among children.

With the cost of the notebooks increasing, the Trust plans to start printing them on their own. These will be eco-friendly and of good quality and will help students to know about deforestation. This academic year the NGO also wants to distribute one lakh textbooks.