E-Base Library: Closing at 136% funding and cartons of donated books!
We made it to 136% funding on our crowdfunding campaign. Although we didn’t reach 200% funding, we will still be setting up two libraries on the two ends of the Pench Tiger Reserve.
To thank our online supporters, here’s a shout out to Arindam Baruah, Jayshree Mishra Tripathi, Swati Choksi, Archi Varma, Monisha Padur, Bharat Sarda, Jash Koradia, Azad Oommen, Kunal Shah, Vinit Phatak, Maithili Parekh Singh, Amrita Rathi, Nikita Chatterjee, Dina Ginwalla, Priyanka Gupta, Varun Darji, Pranav Vissanji, Jeyashree Vaidyanathan, Devang Rawat, Nabeel Najeeb, Divya Nawale, India Impex, Simone Dinshaw, Dr. Kamal Singh, Jasdeep Oberoi, Rahul Advani, Varshini Neeti Mohan, Shri Sajjan Gupta Trust, Ruchit Kapadia, Shegufta Alam, Sanjay Gupta, Karina Daruwala, Sujit Sahu, Aditya Sanghvi, BandanJot Singh, Mahesh Multani, Rajesh Mishra, Karan Mulchandani, Rajesh Upadhyay, Ashok Ramdham, Kinjal Shah and Vaidehi Patel.
Our libraries will have myriad number of benefits for our students.
We saw a lot of offline support towards our library fund and E-Base program. Here is a heartfelt thank you to Savita Choksi, Ila Patel, Boro Milosevic, Eirin Asland, Leif Anil Goksem, Gaurav Pawar, Kalpesh Rawal, UR- Asha Javeri Foundation Trust, Saloni Doshi, Geetika Jain, RUR Green Life Pvt. Ltd., Nadan and Anjali Piramal and Kalpataru Trust.
Support also came in in the form of lovely encyclopedias and old science and informational books. Some, as generous as Minal Nairi, sending us four different full sets of encyclopedias just made our day! We also saw young, enterprising students like Varun Nagpal hold a book collection drive to get as many books as he could from his class mates for the students in Pench; we truly can’t thank him enough! This is our way of saying thank you to Jeyashree Vaidyanathan, Veena Nagpal, Varun Nagpal, Roopali Piramal, Ishani Kacholia, Chyan Kohli, Adya Hegde, Arya Hegde, Divyanshi Agarwal, Tanya Ghosh, Sanjay Patel and Minal Nairi.
Lastly, we would also like to thank the folks at Bitgiving.com for being such wonderful and encouraging hosts. Despite our apprehension being tyros at the crowdfunding process, the entire process was smooth and, to our surprise, easy.
A quote by Kofi Annan which comes to mind as we embark on this library project, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family”, succinctly captures our objective behind the project. When our communities flourish, so will the tiger and its home.
Wearing the mask of the king of the jungle
You can follow our blog as we document our journey of setting up Pench’s first library for communities on the fringe on the tiger reserve.
(The E-Base library is a humble attempt to open up the world of books to the students of Pench. The importance of reading for a holistic education cannot be discounted and the E-Base library strives to fill this gap that exists by bringing to the students books from all around the world. With a choice of books on biodiversity, science, environmental conservation, Gondi folktales and encyclopedias, in both, Hindi and English, the library not only augments their general awareness and knowledge of their surroundings and its relation to the world but also inculcates an appreciation for their rich Gondi roots.)
