Food4Thought is a non-profit organisation that builds libraries for underprivileged communities. The foundation takes donations in the form of books that may be collecting dust in their shelves so they may spark a joy of reading in young minds that do not have access to them. Simply put, they want to connect idle books to hungry minds to create a reading revolution, as they say on their website, food4thoughtfoundation.org.
A poster I made that we put up all around campus
Gandhi School of Humanities and Social Sciences came together with Food4Thought as an inaugural action for social welfare, the first of many more to come. The objective was to collect books from anyone across the GITAM campus that was willing to donate, F4TF acting as the intermediate channel to connect those books to hungry minds.
This was the general idea, anyway. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. If you look carefully, the image you see of me smiling with a thumbs up sign hides weeks of running around campus trying to spread awareness, carrying books in from everywhere people managed to remember, and trying to part with my own beloved books. I also had to run correspondence with a member of the F4TF team. I don’t even know how I managed to text formally. Is that even possible? Sending WhatsApp messages formally? Oh, maybe I’m just a Gen-Z special snowflake then.
When trying to make something like this happen, especially in a college like GITAM that has a majority population of I-don’t-read-books is difficult to say the least. However we did manage to scrape together well over 200 books across 2 weeks in March, peak time for assignment submissions and last chance to make sure you’re passing your classes.
One of the other posters that went up. This was made by a member of the L&M Team on campus.
We had help, of course. Student clubs and the English faculty – and all of them are to be applauded for their charitable gesture. To all the donors who chipped in for making this campaign a success, GSHS expresses the highest gratitude. Humanities is nothing if it isn’t working for social welfare and putting action into thoughts. There was true humanitarian action shown by those donors.
A special thanks must be expressed for the faculty from the School of Humanities, especially faculty coordinators, without whose help this project would not have given such a favorable outcome. The English Lab faculty were especially cooperative as they were the ones receiving maintaining a register, as well as storing and packing the books. I honestly don’t know how they could bear to see me rush in every couple days with arms full of old books. They also packed and sent off the books, which I am glad I didn’t have to do if I’m being completely honest. The postal service kind of scares me.
It is initiatives and campaigns like these that help make a difference and bring us closer to building a better world. This is what brings out the humanity in a group of people and brings them together as a collective to work for a good cause. It also brings out the workaholic rabid in some people (like me) who manage to make things work out.
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