A group of nine persons from various walks of life has initiated a unique venture for inculcating reading habits among schoolchildren in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh.

The group named Ummedon Ki Udaan went to Annada High School — an 85-year-old educational institution in Hazaribagh — with a few bundles of books on Saturday, told the students about the importance of reading books other than textbooks and also gave them books on loan for a week, assuring they could take more such books of their choice if they actually liked reading those.

“We found that not many schoolchildren read books other than their textbooks these days, so tried this as an experiment, with a hope that the school students will gradually pick up a reading habit,” informed Shib Shankar Goswami, a member of the group and also a teacher at St Xavier’s School, Hazaribagh. He added that they had plans to collect more books and cover more schools.

They carried over 100 books to Annada High School and explained to the students how reading different types of books could help them know more about the world outside their classroom, Goswami informed.

“We then invited the students to flip through the books displayed and also to choose if they wished to read any of those,” Goswami said, adding the students took all the books they had carried to the school.

They would go back to the school after a week and ask the students if they read the books and whether they liked those, he further said. They would also give the children a chance to take other books or even renew the ones issued to them if they could not complete reading those for some valid reasons.

“Judging by the enthusiasm showed by the students, we are hopeful this mobile library, if you call it so, will pick up,” said Chandra Shekhar Khushwaha, a bank officer who was also part of the group that went to the school.

“I was thrilled as I never saw so many books together, let alone flipping through their pages,” said Nilesh, a 10th grader of that school who took Toofan, a Hindi translation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, for a week.

Nilesh’s classmate Dev Anand said: “I wanted to read such books but couldn’t afford to buy those.” Anand chose a Hindi translation of Tagore’s Kabuliwala and said he would read more books if he continued to get the facility.

“I liked the idea of initiating such a unique mobile library that can help inculcate reading habits among schoolchildren,” Kushwaha said about his involvement.

“We got 110 books as a donation from Harsh Khandelwala, one of our former students whose family runs a well-known bookstore in Hazaribagh,” informed Goswami, adding there were some others who wanted to donate money for buying more books but they would approach them only if they found students were really interested in borrowing books from them.

“We also have two volunteers who helped us keep records of the issuance of books and will also take feedback from students,” he further said, adding they would also go to other such schools with more books after they got an encouraging response from the present school.