Shining idea on used paper

Each individual at their level can make a great difference in society and bring about a positive change! Students of Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies (SSCBS) are a perfect example of the idiom.

More than a year old initiative of collecting one-sided used sheets to make notebooks, is not only making the environment better today but also helping the hearing impaired and victims of drug abuse and trafficking become economically independent.

Under Project Akshar which began in April last year, around 26 students set up drop boxes at schools, colleges and offices where people could drop one-sided used sheets.

They sent the collected sheets to NGOs which work for the rehabilitation of deaf women, victims of drug abuse and human trafficking who then bound the papers into notebooks. The students taught them how to bind the sheets together.

“Initially, only deaf women would bind these sheets but we associated ourselves with more organisations that worked for drug abuse and human trafficking also,” says Divik Giridhar, a first-year team member of Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) of SSCBS under which the project is being run.

But the students have taken the project a step further. The notebooks are distributed to students and children belonging to the economically weaker sections of society with the help NGOs. According to students of SSCBS, one-sided sheets’ notebooks have now reached more than 1800 children of the City who cannot afford them.

Initially, only 22 students of SSCBS of the college were part of Project Akshar but later students of other colleges also joined for support. “The impact is bigger like this and the message reaches out to a large number of students. Other colleges were also made a part of this initiative which aims at helping the needy people in an indirect way rather than giving charity money to NGOs,” explains Divik.

Since the second phase of the project that began in November last, notebooks are also being made after recycling used paper at the recycling unit of NGO Jagruti. Notebooks made from recycled paper are available in local markets through different NGOs and one in every three notebooks is given to a needy child. “It is something everybody would want to be associated with. There is no particular day for taking the sheets for recycling. We take the collected paper to the NGO as and when the drop box gets full,” says Kunal Bora, a student and college leader of Ramjas College.

With each passing day, the support for the project has swelled. Presently, the project has college leaders from around 35 colleges including Lady Shri Ram, Miranda House, Hansraj College and Jamia Millia University.

A consultancy firm of Gurgaon provides logistics to the students as its support to the cause. “When college leaders cannot go to recycling unit for some reason, this company collects the stacks of sheets from the colleges and takes it to the NGO,” Divik says.

Everyone needs to take a leaf out of the book of these students and recognise that it is indeed individual effort that can bring about change!