What a Blank Page Is Worth
A notebook might not seem like much a stack of blank pages, a cover that’ll be defaced before the week is over the sort of thing that most of us get tossed out with the old set of books before school starts a new. It’s easy to overlook that a blank notebook represents a small bet on the future that there will be lessons worth writing down, and the ability to wield a pen to write them down at all.
On 6 September, that small bet was made 250 times over, with the Arwanya Youth Summit’s donation of 250 notebooks and stationery items to students at Pehchaan The Street School’s IP Centre.
It’s a simple kind of contribution that’s worth pausing on, a small one, because it’s not dressed up as anything more than what it is (there’s no multi year partnership to unpack, as with more ambitious corporate donations) and a powerful one, because it represents the ability of youth volunteers to identify and respond to a need with the resources and reach available to them on a given day, rather than waiting for an external partnership to bring it about.
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There’s a certain value to stationery as an entrypoint into education, even at this very basic level. It’s not the sort of contribution that lends itself well to a press release, but it is a literal one, a student cannot write down the notes from a lesson on a multiplication table, or draft an essay, without some sort of materials to do so. The donation is a response to an immediately felt need by an under resourced community, and the immediacy of its impact is part of what makes it stand out, youth volunteering doesn’t tend to have the luxury of a long-term programme to channel its time and effort into, and often has to measure its impact in days or weeks rather than years.
While it might not directly address the deeper, long running issues of educational inequality in underserved communities, it does give the community a small reprieve on 6 September, 250 students learned something that they might not otherwise have been able to. That’s the point of youth volunteering to meet needs as they arise, with whatever solutions can be mustered in the time.
Students and young people who make up these volunteer groups don’t have the infrastructure or the resources to launch big, multiyear initiatives in education they do, however, have a certain urgency in wanting to respond to the needs they see around them, and the ability to mobilise their peers towards that end. It’s a uniquely fitting kind of changemaking for the volunteer space, both in its scale and in its immediacy, an issue is identified, a group musters what it can offer the cause, and 250 students at the IP Centre have what they need to learn for another day.
There’s a broader point to be made about contributions like Arwanya Youth Summit’s, which is that they’re a sign of the sort of social impact that can be made without the backing of a big organisation behind it; it comes from grassroots, and reflects the way that communities (of young people, or otherwise) can organise themselves around a need. That sort of social entrepreneurship is its own kind of valuable skillset, and one which students and young people can develop alongside their traditional ones as they move through their careers.
250 notebooks won’t solve every need, but for 250 students at the IP Centre, they’re a guarantee that they can continue to learn for at least one more day. Young changemakers can support education, volunteer their time, and raise their communities up.
Learn more about Pehchaan The Street School at Know about us:
Website: https://pehchaanstreetschool .org
Google: Pehchaan The Street School
Indraprastha Metro Station, Delhi 110001
097117 18972
Review here > https://g.co/kgs/X4x1GL
Facebook page link — https://www.facebook.com /PehchaanTheStreetSchoolOfficial/
Facebook Pehchaan Group link — https://lnkd.in/gyGXxbtu /162142001383888/?ref=share
