Youths donate books to children
Youths donate books to children
Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Concern that deprived children have limited access to knowledge
encouraged nine youths to form the 1001buku community in January
last year, with as its main goal the provision of as many books
as possible for such children.
On its first anniversary on Saturday, 1001buku held a book-
donating fair at the Harkat Bangsa Foundation office in an effort
to see more people donate used books.
"Our task is to find more donors to enable us to distribute
books to other libraries throughout the country," said the
community coordinator, Dwi Andayani.
Some libraries that have received books from the community
include the Pustakaloka Rumah Dunia library, Serang, Banten, the
Combat library, Bogor, and the Tanah Merah library, Babue, Papua.
Dwi said that the 1001buku community only accepted children's
books because they would be handed over to children aged six to
14 years old. She had to check comics before distributing them to
libraries because sometimes they had adult content.
The community also has another scheme, Book-Drop-Box, where,
at specific locations, people can drop books they wish to donate.
"The program is now running at some schools and office
buildings," said Dwi.
Book-Drop-Box locations include the LabSchool in Kebayoran,
The British Council on Jl. Jend. Sudirman and PT BASF Indonesia
in Kuningan, all in South Jakarta.
The program has been successful in encouraging youngsters to
donate books. One of the donors, Ratih from privately run
LabSchool junior high school, managed to collect 11,000 books
from her friends.
"I like to read books. I often think of deprived kids who have
no access to books. So, I asked my friends at school to donate
their used books," said the 13-year-old girl.
The community now has 62 boxes of books, or around 12,000 in
total. The number of volunteers has also increased to some 800
people.
To find out more about the 1001buku community, people can
access it through its website, www.1001buku.org.
"Everything in 1001buku is donated by people who are concerned
at improving children's reading habits. The distribution has even
been funded by a private logistics company," said Dwi.