Chennai kids organise book sales with a difference

A group of seven schoolkids in Chennai come together to raise funds to help underprivileged children with books, school stationery and other things that would support their academic journey.

As we know, a majority of India’s underprivileged children are not educated. Even when they do go to school, they are often deprived of the staples for supporting their academic journey. Most urban kids start school with a fresh set of stationery and books each year. If you and I can have it, why can’t underprivileged children have the same as well? 

Gnawed at by this thought, six of my schoolmates and I, supported by our parents, decided to help the less privileged through charity. We built a mini organisation called “Kids4Kids” where children like us would help other less privileged children. This would be funded through the money we earn by making jewellery, selling books and other activities.

We called this mission of ours to help the underprivileged ‘Mission Compassion’. As we like to say, “Charity sees the need, not the cost”.

To begin with, we collected around 200 books and a resale was organized at the main entrance of Nageshwar Rao Park in Chennai on April 26, 2017. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and as usual, the park was buzzing with regular visitors. Summer vacations only meant more people.

The books were reasonably priced, ranging from 10 to 100 rupees. For example, if a textbook cost Rs.600, we sold it for Rs.50. Making the books cheap got us more customers, hence more sales and profit. The money we collected would go towards The Eureka School near Kalpakkam, in the outskirts of Chennai to help the children in their classrooms. With the money, they would be given stationery such as notebooks, pencils and pens, .

We enthusiastically campaigned for our cause and convinced many to contribute their bit to help the underprivileged. Almost the entire collection of books was sold out by the end of the day and we managed to collect Rs.6,500.

We also had a second event at the Car-Free Sunday in Elliots Beach, Besant Nagar. We set up our book stall at six in the morning and within minutes we had cyclists, children and walkers crowding around to buy our books. This time we collected nearly Rs.8,000!

The two events really boosted our enthusiasm and we were overjoyed at the thought that our dream of helping the underprivileged children might actually come true. If you, too, would like to reach out and support our cause, you can contact us at missioncompassionteam@gmail.com.

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