You stumble upon an Instagram page that tells you how, after 12 Saturdays of volunteering, you're going to make a big impact to the education system in the country. You have just found out about the Share A Book, India Association's volunteering program and its promise about really making a difference to how children in schools read books. If you had doubts regarding the impact you could really make through the program, this article should remove your queries.
SABIA advocates a "two hour per Saturday" regime - over 12 such Saturdays - of volunteers helping local schools develop a library system. Assuming that one volunteer is allotted one class, which has an average of 40 children, 12 weeks ideally cover 20 hours of reading per child (not accounting for the first two classes where a library system could be established). At the end of 12 weeks when a self-sustaining library system is set up, the volunteers could be transferred to another school.
The first library set-up is ideally scheduled to be completed in 12 weeks, and so, four such classes may be trained by one volunteer over the 52 weeks of one year! Assuming the same average of 40 children, we can account for an impact to 160 children on minimum in one year by one volunteer. As of now, SABIA has 20 volunteers in the Pune chapter. Assuming each volunteer has one class, 3200 children have begun to read better in one year.
Imagine being part of a system that can help positively affect how a minimum of 3200 children read, even after you have left the school after 12 weeks. We have not even considered the different cities and total schools that SABIA is operating in. Truly, the scale at which SABIA can affect change in India is tremendous. What are you waiting for? Fill in the volunteer form today, and experience the power of two hours over 12 weeks for yourself, your immediate community, and the lives of inquisitive children.
Pushkar Marathe
SABIA Youth Leader, Pune
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