Mumbai outfits team up to provide basic stationery to students from Below Poverty Line families
Subhajit Mukherjee at a donation drive in Kandivli. Pic/Anurag Ahire
The phrase, ‘closing the digital divide’ has gained currency during the Covid-19 lockdown, where we inhabit the online world more than ever before. What this phrase means, used often in the context of schools and education, is to give economically disadvantaged students devices like smartphones, access to computers, WiFi and bring some academic parity between them and the more privileged students.
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There are students from homes who cannot even dream of smartphones. For them, basic stationery like ball pens, notebooks, pencils, scales, crayons remain out of reach. These are students from Below Poverty Line (BPL) families, and, “we are working towards making stationery accessible to them, as they currently study from home,” said activist Subhajit Mukherjee. Mukherjee is the mover and shaker behind an initiative called pen4cause — an effort to collect one billion ball pens to donate to students from BPL families.
The drive
Said Mukherjee who is also founder, ‘Mission Green Mumbai’, “We all have old ball pens lying around in the house, which we do not use. These can be collected and given to us for donation. Even if they are not in working condition, we can repair them. These pens are just scattered, at times they are trashed. They can prove useful for somebody and contribute towards a child’s right to education.”
The Talavali village
Mukherjee claimed that there are children, “who come from such backward families that 10 pens, which is the absolute minimum for an academic year, is a luxury for them. We have this cause primarily for pens, but some of our donors have been giving sharpeners, erasers and colour pencils too, which we have distributed. We recently had a distribution in the Charkop slum area (Kandivli), but we have, through a number of our partners and supporters, donated stationery to certain villages on the outskirts of Mumbai. We have collected roughly 26,000 ball pens and we have other stationery, too,” said the activist who also hoped that the drive notwithstanding, “people who have stationery lying around unused after their student life, or whose children pass out of school, will donate this to the less fortunate.
Make this a part of your life,” he signed off.
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Village life
It is raining pens for Professor Manoj Deshmukh, head, civil engineering dept, MHSS Polytechnic, Byculla. Said Professor Deshmukh, one of the partners and supporters of pen4cause, “Most of our donors send us pens, stationery through courier. I make the trip to a Zilla Parishad School, in Katkariwadi, Talavali, Bhiwandi (Thane) to distribute the stationery. Though school is closed, one or two staffers do attend once a week for some administrative matters, this material is given to students through the teachers’ network. This village has the Katkari tribe. The school has made a stationery library of sorts.”
The activists claim that it is all very well to talk about internet connection, WiFi access and speed, besides a smartphone for all. While these are challenges unique to some, there are people who are so desperate that the Rs 40 or so, needed for 10 pens in the year, a bare minimum is beyond their families. “Imagine dropping out of school because of want of stationery. This is a shameful situation but a very real prospect for those in dire straits. Some humble ballpoint pens can make that difference between degree and dropouts for those on the margins,” they finished. The acronym BPL conventionally stands for Below Poverty Line (BPL) but pen4cause aims to make that a more uplifting acronym like Ball Points for Learning and Life (BPL).
How to donate to pen4cause?
Send an email to Pen4Cause@gmail.com to get details about the closest destination to donate stationery.
26k
Approx. no. of pens collected by pens4cause so far
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