Bhopal Corporation's 'Kitab Ghar' Fulfils Educational Needs Of Underprivileged Kids Amid Pandemic

Bhopal Municipal Corporation's (BMC) Kitab Ghar initiative launched in 2019 is aimed at donating books to help children study. To date, the residents of Bhopal have already donated more than one lakh used books and magazines.

Some of the reading material donated by the residents has been kept at BMC libraries across the city while some of it has been recycled into new notebooks before being distributed among children of government schools, who cannot afford to buy new notebooks, reported The New Indian Express.

Bhopal's additional municipal commissioner MP Singh said that the project was started as part of various initiatives under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Singh said that it had been a long-standing practice for generations in many families to not dump books after the completion of an academic year. He mentioned that such books could rather be shared with children of the same family or associated families to ensure saving of money and also wastage of books.

He added that this initiative has revived that practice, but with a larger objective of helping underprivileged kids study from the same books. He also said that this could be helpful, particularly during the pandemic when families' finances have gone for a toss.

BMC has partnered with www.thekabadiwala.com, a portal that specialises in providing free doorstep service of scrap collection and disposal to people in five cities – Bhopal, Indore, Raipur, Lucknow and Nagpur.

It has allowed them to develop a systematic mechanism for collecting books and recycling out-of-syllabus books and notebooks into new notebooks.

Most of the used books, notebooks and magazines donated by the people are first collected and stored at various Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and BMC ward offices in 85 municipal wards of the city.

After the books are collected at Kitab Ghar storehouses, they are later segregated for libraries being run by the BMC or for being used at government schools.

Apart from school books and notebooks of nursery classes to Class XII, other books for competitive exams are also been donated by youngsters.

One of the students who was benefitted from this initiative, Athar Ali, said, "With COVID-19 having hit our family income, I couldn't buy books for preparing for engineering entrance exams. So I've started going to one of the libraries which are having books channelised through the Kitab Ghar initiative. I am getting considerable help in my preparation."

Another student who lives in the Bhim Nagar slums is among those junior class students of a government school who has got new notebooks through this initiative.

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