Right direction: Make way for books on wheels

Mobile library will be heading to different schools and parks soon.

KARACHI:

A mobile library will be making its way to different schools and parks in the city.

This joint initiative of the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP) and clothing store Sheep was hosted by The Express Tribune hi five! at Baradari Park in Saddar on Tuesday. The project is also being supported by Radio FM 91, Lotus Software and the Automobile Corporation of Pakistan.

Around 200 students from three schools — The Garage School, Abdullah Shah Ghazi Girls’ School and the Cantt School — were present at the event. Despite being invited, the boys’ schools did not send students, so with the exception of one boy, all the students were female.

A group of students from The Garage School performed a short skit about diversity. “Not all of us are the same and we wanted to really hammer home that idea,” said CAP national director of education Sabiha Bokhari, who was the writer of the skit. “I’ve been an educationalist all my life and I must say that it is a pleasure when you extract the best out of the students and see them shine.”

After the skit, the students spoke about what they had learnt, claiming that it had helped them appreciate the differences in people and taught them to celebrate those differences.

The teachers from CAP also organised a quiz for the students and prizes were handed out for answering quickly and accurately. The questions ranged from the tallest building in Pakistan to the coldest city, with students eagerly waving their hands in a bid to answer first.

Ayesha Jafar of Sheep revealed that CAP reached out to them for a collaborated mobile library effort, after hearing of the reading sessions hosted at Sheep’s outlet in Dolmen Mall every Friday. “Most of the books are donations from customers of Sheep,” she said. “We spread awareness of our reading sessions and encourage donations by handing out flyers with every purchase.”

The initiative was the brainchild of Sheep’s business director. “She began the reading sessions in April and now we are contributing books for the mobile library,” said Jafar. She explained that the mobile library is a cart that will move all over Karachi, including parks and schools.

The Express Tribune also organised an art competition for the students where they designed cards on large pieces of paper depicting ‘Pakistan as we see it’. The 10 best cards will be published in the newspaper’s hi five! section.

Finally, the students were given pieces of paper to write a letter to students in India as part of CAP’s Exchange for Change programme. The letters will be sent to schools in India in exchange for letters from their students.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2014.