Coming together for a cause

Dear friends

It has been a long time since we connected with you. Hope all of you are doing fine! The two years have gone past us in a whiff. We’ve experimented new ways to help children read, owing to the pandemic – but some of it has probably become the norm now! (Another day another post on these musings). We formed new partnerships as the year began and our mission to spread the joy of reading has been going in full throttle.

With monsoons setting in Hyderabad, July 2nd was yet another chilly, wet and cloudy day. But that did not stop us from celebrating our sponsors, our volunteers and our partners who have been with us in our journey. Early in the morning on Saturday, our team proceeded towards Golkonda Fort to reach Bright Horizon Academy, a school in Mohalla Ghanj. It was a day with multiple things going on and we started it with our training “Inculcating Joyful Reading” for four of our partners. The day also included recognizing our volunteers and corporate sponsor and distribution of books to partner schools. Enjoy the virtual tour of our celebrations that day.

Enroute to BHA. BHA school building on the right

The morning started with our training for about 30 participants. I will write separately on the details of our first in-person training of the academic year. As I was handling the training in one of the rooms, there was a buzz of activity going on the other side. With Sreekala (new addition to the Joy of Reading family) leading, Apurva, Vamsi, Samanvit were getting everything ready for the upcoming event – final checking of the books to be distributed, verification of certificates to be distributed to our volunteers, coordinating with guests on direction to venue, etc.

Our volunteer force  headed by Sreekala -> Samanvit, Sreekala, Vamsi, Apurva

We had partners from four different organizations attend our training and the event. Naresh, Chakravarthi and Divya from Amma Social Welfare Association, Praveen and Prashanth from Hope Orphanage, two schools run by Sahayata Trust and teachers from our host Bright Horizon Academy (BHA). We had ear marked around 250 books to each school. And as you must know by now, we do not stop with just giving books but go a step beyond, and help schools understand how to run a library, and also techniques that help with inculcating reading systematically in children.

Come noon, guests started trickling in for our celebratory event. First, our little champs from Bright Horizons Academy who volunteered for us assembled. Representatives from our corporate sponsor arrived shortly- namely, Ms. Sadhana, Director R&D, CSR of Sakkugroup , Ms. Prienca and Ms. Gandharva . We were also joined by Mr. Azharuddin Mohammed, Director of Challenger Stem Schools of Sahayata Trust. It was time to recognize and celebrate everyones effort in helping us in our mission.

SakkuGroup was our biggest corporate sponsor this year who believed that reading is an important part of a child’s growth. Ms. Sadhana inaugurated the event with a brief talk on their company’s support for various causes and with specific focus on education. She mentioned that they believed and liked that Joy of Reading was making an impact in the field of education with its focus on enabling and developing a reading habit in children. She proffered her company’s support in Joy of Reading’s endeavors.

Thank you so much Ms. Sadhana. The money that Sakkugroup donated will go into buying various levelled books for around 20 schools. We and our partners express our heartfelt thanks to you and your organization.

Distribution of Books by Sakkugroup to BHA, Hope Orphanages, ASWA Foundation, Challenger Schools – Shaheen Bagh and Kishan Bagh

Mr . Azharuddin talked about the partnership between Sahayata and Joy of Reading. He also shared his life experiences and how reading impacted his own journey from being a boy from a rural background to becoming the head of multiple schools.

Sharing is what we have been taught to do all our lives. It’s the same philosophy when organizations involved in philanthropy joined together as well – sharing available resources with each other . Ms. Farida, principal of Bright Horizon Academy had given space in her school to Joy of Reading to store its books and conduct its sorting and packing operations. She did not stop there. When we needed help to record some training videos, she sent some of her wonderful little champs from the school to help. We showed our small appreciation to these little champs and Ms. Farida.

BHA LIttle Champs with Ms. Farida, School Principal BHA

It was then time for lunch sponsored by Sahayata Trust. The guests mingled and enjoyed Vegetable Biriyani, one of Hyderabad’s delicacies.

Sakku Groip, JoR, Sahayata Trust, BHA

During lunch we were joined by Adarsh and Aradhya Sriram who attended the event amidst their very many classes and school programs. Kudos to both for conducting and driving a book donation drive at their community complex. The children worked on flyers and communication on their own, with help from their mother Geetha . Together they collected around 700+ books for Joy of Reading which were also distributed as part of the event ! Our small token of appreciation to both the kiddos.

Sriram (father of kiddos),Harini, Aradhya, Adarsh, Sreekala

Finally here’s to Apurva Gadde, who had been our go to volunteer for all and sundry. She had stepped up at multiple instances during our book drives and ferried books from donors to our store. She was also the photographer of the event providing us these lovely captures. Our small appreciation for her invaluable contribution to the org. Thank you Apurva!

Farida mam presenting Apurva with a token of appreciation

There is a proverb that says “It takes a village to raise a child.” Indeed! It’s not just us who are involved in the mission to spread the joy of reading. From young to old, non profits to corporates, students to teachers – multiple people are involved to get this going. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported and continue to support us in our journey. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.

Three cheers to all of us !

Beating Covid – Our biggest Online Training Event

2020! What a year! However, the human race continued to think out of the box to move on and not be defeated by an invisible virus. JoR was no exception. We had one of our biggest online librarian training events conducted during Oct 2020 for the Telangana Social Welfare Residential Schools (TSWRS) schools. Check below to know more details.

Inculcating Joyful Reading

Joy of Reading (JoR) had conducted a pilot program (Structured Reading Program) during the academic year 2019 – 2020 at TSWRS Narsingi. There was a wealth of knowledge and learning from the pilot. We then drafted it into an experiential workshop for both librarians and English teachers. 

During the academic year, 2020 – 2021 TSWRS inducted a lot of new librarians for all their schools. The new librarians needed to be trained in library management and be provided with guidance to develop a reading interest in children. TSWRS approached JoR for an in-depth training program for their librarians. There were about 170+ schools with around 180 teachers who needed to undergo the training. 

JoR conducted a two-day online workshop “Inculcating Joyful Reading”, for two hours per session. Exercises and lectures were tailored to suit the online medium. The librarians were assigned prep work to complete before they attended the training, and were given short exercises during the training to assimilate and work on applying the concepts.


Goal: The aim of the workshop was to promote holistic reading development in children systematically.  It aimed to teach techniques to both librarians and English teachers that could be incorporated in their daily teaching or operation routine

 Workshop Synopsis

  • Basics of library maintenance (Making the library an attractive place to spend time)
  • Techniques – Measuring Reading Levels, Interactive Read Aloud
  • Role of Librarians.
  • Application of Learnt techniques 
  • Managing Struggling Readers
  • Everyday Reading Time.

The training was conducted on Oct 27th, Oct 28th for around 90 librarians, and another session was conducted on Oct 29th, Oct 31st for another 90 librarians. Despite being online, the training was very successful in keeping the attendees engaged and interactive.  Questions were asked and answered, and thoughts were expressed over the chatting medium.

Harini Raghavan, Joy of Reading, Board Member conducted the training. Three other volunteers – Shiney, Sailaja, and Vandana helped conduct the simulation of ‘Measuring Reading Level ‘ Scenario exercises.
It was a meeting full of librarians and their role was explained along with best practices to maintain a library.
Techniques were explained to help overcome the frustrations experienced by children when being asked to read.

At the end of the workshop, a free flow discussion ensued to discuss the next steps and feedback on the training.

Training Effectiveness

116 respondents replied to training effectiveness survey
Training delivery – 4.35 / 5
Training Content – 4.6 / 5

The Plusses – Verbatim Comments

  • Excellent Programme as most of our librarians are newly recruited the training session is very useful
  • These sessions were very much useful and inspiring for newly joined librarians like me. 
  • Training is very useful for us
  • A wonderful training session was given by Harini madam. We learnt how to inculcate the students towards reading and also how to motivate the children towards non-academic books.
  • Nice training l have learnt loud reading. How to read loudly technique is for useful struggling children.
  • The training session was very useful in getting familiar with the methods for improving reading skills among the students
  • Please interact and give training and healthy discussion to our English lecturers and school section English teachers along with librarians please involve them also 
  • It is very useful. In that training session, we learnt a lot of things it is very useful for all the students…
  • Thank you for this training. we learn how to assess the children and they are also showing to listen read and write the stories. Thank you, mam
  • It was a very good session and it was very comfortable
  • The training is good, it is helpful to assess the students reading level systematically and the books provided are according to the level of the students which are suitable and helps to improve reading skills cognitively. 
  • The training session was very useful for us. learnt the importance of finding struggling readers and  maKing them comfortable readers 
  • Training sessions are very useful and in that, we learnt how to improve reading skills in the children and how to help the struggling readers. Thank you
  • The training session was good .it was very helpful to identify the students level according to that we can measure and improve them to level by level by providing different levelled books. and the joy of reading story videos are very helpful us to interact with all the students and to develop  their interest towards LSWR skills. Thankyou
  • Training session is very use full  develop reading levels in students
  • I felt so happy that it is helping every children in joy of reading. I hope training session should every year so that every library will develop.
  • Very useful and learned maintain library.
  • The training  program  was too good  madam,this is very  helpful  to us for measuring  reading  levels  of the students & leveling of story books 

Suggestions

  • The training session was good and need videos/audios telling the importance of libraries and reading .why they have to go to the library and read books.
  • In my view the training was conducted offline is a better way. Through online, we were facing many problems like network, audio etc.
  • Training session very useful but our students are stayed at home COVID 19 situation next academic year very effectively implemented by  us


Write to us @ joyofreadingus@gmail.com if you want to understand more on how to inculcate reading systematically for school going children. Till we meet you again ! Bye

Crowdsourcing Help through Volunteers – Our Modus Operandi

A common question in many a persons mind when they hear about a non profit organisation is how are operations run?  Its a valid concern and question for anyone who is a donor to the organisation. Here we would like to give you some insights into our model of operation.

@USA

Our books are largely sourced from the USA . They are procured through very many book donation drives. Books from USA form more than 90% of our inventory.   As an organisation we strongly believe in recycling and reusing.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

Books can never be trash but simply one outgrows them and moves onto the next set. But there will be 1000s more who can be benefitted by the book.  That has been our first principle – how can we reuse the treasure spread across the world. Do we need to buy books or can we reuse them – many a times we have seen people donating books to other children when their own have outgrown. The books that come to us are in good condition though they have been donated.

The first step: Donation drives

These donation drives are done by the 3 main trust members in the USA board namely Madhu, Yogita and Stephanie. Each of them enlist the help of friends to volunteer to help with the donation drives . These donation drives happen at schools or communities or work places or sometimes book stores donate them, Very seldom have we bought books and it happens maybe at half price sales.  Here is a sample of our donation drive which gets heavily advertised on all forms of social media, email  as well as word of mouth.

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 The second step: First level of sorting and boxing

The books need to be then sorted into their respective categories . This is once more a volunteer driven operation headed by our board members in the USA. It also takes place in Madhu’s house, founding member of JoR. Help for this is crowdsourced as well and friends sign up for the same. here is a sample of how its advertised

Its made into a fun activity for both adults and children and is fondly referred to as a book sorting party – indeed its a party for book lovers who just go through several thousands of books and organising into their categories . Check out where both our youth and adult volunteers helping us out with a sorting event.

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The third step : Shipping to India

Once again volunteers are sourced for trasnferring books from America to India. People relocating to India who hire a container help us in carrying 1000s of books. There are also people who keep shuttling between Hyderabad (our base in India) and Seattle (our base in the USA) as part of business trips. We make them carry one suitcase of books.  Till date we haven’t spent any money for transferring books overseas. It has been the goodwill of several of friends and acquaintances who have helped us in this good cause.

@INDIA

The fourth step: Sorting and levelling in India

In India once the boxes are transferred to our library at Kalyan Nagar, Hyderabad . Once again through help of volunteers the levelling (using Grow by Reading) , sorting and accounting of books happen. The novels are further classified based on authors or series type. Reference books are classified into Animals, Space, Geography, English, Math, Magazines, Management etc. The volunteer help is sourced through word of mouth by the India board member. Both children and adults help with the whole process.

The fifth Step: Shipping to recipients

We have to ship cartons to places outside of Hyderabad for which we need help in shifting the boxes and packing and actual shipping. This is where we spend money to pack and ship it to send it to the interiors of various states. At times we ask our own partners to bear the bill or we go ahead and bear it at our end.

These form our bulk of operations where we use the help of volunteers mainly. Our main costs include the hire of a part time as and when needed manual labor to help us with the cleanliness and maintenance of the library in India, auditor costs for help with filing taxes and printing our stationery (such as labels and receipt books and those with the upkeep of our money in bank). But as we increase the size of our operation we have to rethink our strategy.