Street Readers

“It’s a mistaken conception that the homeless beg for their living. Most homeless work as daily wagers but find it difficult to rent a space and are forced to stay on the streets. Many of them have basic education. Their children,too,go to the near by civic schools,” said Abhishek Bharadwaj from Alternative Realities.

In a survey conducted by the NGO,it was found as many as 38 per cent of the total 1.5 lakh homeless population has the basic reading skills (SSC-6 per cent,Secondary-11per cent,Primary- 20 per cent,Illiterate-58 per cent). Further the survey suggested that 83 per cent know Hindi,48 per cent know Marathi and 4 per cent know basic English.

The library aims at focusing on homeless who are so engrossed in the fight of their daily survival that education becomes a secondary issue.

“While parents are busy fending for the family,education takes a back seat. Our idea is to help them build their self-esteem,generate their interests in reading and create a community space to stimulate social interactions,” Bharadwaj added.

Several NGO’s have been fighting for the shelter rights of the homeless. Eventually in July,the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) relented to duplicate the Delhi model of shelter homes in the city for over 1.5 lakh homeless.

Why should an exclusive library for the homeless come up,when the existing libraries run by the civic body remains underutilised? Bharadwaj says,“Homeless parents many times do not encourage their children to go to school. And at any given point in time,the homeless need to guard their sleeping space and hence going to libraries away from their areas is out of question.

With the first library launched at Mahim,which has one of the largest homeless population,Alternative Realities plans to slowly take the project to other parts of the city. “Starting with Mahim and Dadar,the project will eventually be taken to the streets of Bandra,Jogeshwari in the first phase.

In the Second phase (next month) HoL! will reach out to the homeless citizens at VT,Nariman point and surrounding areas,” Bharadwaj added.

The idea which was envisaged a few months ago,already has many volunteers to donate books and work as librarians during their free time. “We have managed to gather a whole bunch of animal books,comics,novels and newspapers. We are hoping more people will join us in this cause.”