CIS girl donates 750 repurposed notebooks to underprivileged students

BENGALURU: In yet another instance of Canadian International School (CIS) student's gesture for the needy, Diya, an IB2 (Grade-12) student has donated more than 750 repurposed notebooks to The Association of People with Disability (APD) and a local government school in North Bangalore. Over 200 students between Grade 1-7 received notebooks from her contributions.

When Diya was young, her mother upcycled unused paper from their home to use the same for a variety of activities ranging from making shopping lists to practising math problems. Diya's mother later encouraged her to recycle paper and Diya found that nearly 30-40 percent of the paper in a notebook was left unused at the end of the academic year.

Diya said, "I think repurposing notebooks is a great way to reduce waste and make a difference to kids who may find it difficult to afford new notebooks. Also, raising money allowed me to bind the paper, giving the children both dignity and the thrill of receiving new notebooks. Hence, I used my free time to collect notebooks and declutter my own stock. While doing this, I realized that many other students might be doing the same thing and I decided to use my social networking skills to take my activity forward. I set up drop boxes at several local apartment buildings to collect unused and slightly used notebooks, to repurpose and distribute them to under-privileged students."

Diya continues to collect partially used notebooks, extracted unused pages, and initiate crowdfunding to fund a new binding. She also designed the cover page and back cover herself. While at CIS, Diya used this initiative as part of her Creativity, activity, service (CAS) activity. Her CAS advisor helped her identify local charitable organizations and schools that would benefit from donation of notebooks. Diya had discovered that many parents who are less fortunate were facing financial challenges to provide books to their children.

The Managing Director, Canadian International School, Shweta Sastri said, "We are so proud of Diya's initiative to give back to our local community in need, while at the same time furthering CIS school's values of respect. Her efforts to upcycle these notebooks also show her respect for the environment which is so important. Repurposing notebooks is a novel idea and the right gesture to help the under-privileged. We would like to see other students too to be part of this noble initiative and we wish her the best in future endeavours."