Books for All came into being quite by chance but the thought behind it had been churning for a long time! As Pravin Bhasin neared his retirement, the urge to do something for the society became even stronger. This thought process coincided with election time in 2009, when he went to collect his voter ID Card from a Government Primary School located in an urban ‘Gejha’ village in Sector 93 NOIDA. He got talking to the teacher in-charge and she requested him to donate dhurries for students to sit on during the winter months. The urge to do something concrete for the children at the Gejha school lingered on with him even after the dhurries had been given. As luck would have it, he was fortunate to connect with like-minded people.
BFA was born of the idea to collect children’s books from more affluent neighbourhoods and make them available at a library center at the Gejha Government school which could be accessed by the children of the school. With the objective in place, once the initial team of volunteers came forth, one room at the Gejha school was converted into a basic library equipped with white board, soft board, chairs, durries and books. The intent was to create a space, to which the children would be attracted to come and browse and read story books.
Initially the library was run with the funds put together by the volunteers themselves. After a year of managing the library with the volunteers’ own funds, Books for All (BFA) was registered as a Public Charitable Trust on 10th February 2011. Since then we have expanded our area of work which has been benefitting not only children but youth as well. Below are the various programmes that we run:
