PY Readathon - Certificates Are on the Way

Today, Friday 28 May, the PY Charity & Environmental Committee is sending out a certificate to the participants who joined the PY Readathon during this year’s PY Book Week and received sponsorship for each book read. The total amount of INR 76,940 collected will be granted to Pratham Books. We reached out to find out more about the Readathon initiative, and got a hold of Mehr and Neil, two of the Grade 5 Prefects in the PY Charity & Environmental Committee.

The PY Readathon started in March, during the 2021 PY Book Week, and went on for a month. Students were encouraged to, not only read as many books as possible, but also to recruit friends and family members to sponsor each book that they had read. All sponsorship contributions were voluntary, and the collected funds are going to Pratham Books, one of the largest non-profit organisations in India.

Pratham Books works with developing reading amongst children from vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, and to introduce children to the joy of reading. “We selected them as recipients for the Readathon, because we believe that literacy is a fundamental right and each child deserves to experience the joy of reading”, says Mehr and explains that one in two children in India cannot read at their Grade level – something that Pratham Books works hard to change. The funds will be used to set up Classroom Libraries in socio-economic challenged Government schools in Bangalore, once people can move around and students start returning to physical schools.

The results of the Readathon were varying, and students managed to both read different amounts of books and collect different amounts of funding from their sponsors. Students read between five and 56 books, and managed to raise between 800 and 11,590 INR. To celebrate the great success of the donations raised through the Readathon, the PY Charity & Environmental Committee decided to send out a Certificate of Recognition to each of the students and their families. The certificate will be sent out today, to commemorate the death of Maya Angelou, American poet and author who passed away on the 28 May, in 2014. “She is a great author who represents reading and, therefore, we chose her”, says Neil, who, together with his committee friends, look forward to hearing about the result of the Pratham Books project.