Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Birthday notebooks

It seems to be a custom for Indian politicians to receive birthday presents from constituents. Satej Patil, Minister of State in Maharashtra, India, accepts only notebooks, which he then gives to schoolchildren. Since 2007, he has distributed 16.27 lakh notebooks to 3.80 lakh students — 1,627,000 notebooks to 380,000 students.

(found via Notebook Stories)

Update, 1:38 p.m.: I e-mailed Minister Patil to commend him for this effort. He hopes that others will follow his example.

[Lakh: “a hundred thousand,” “via Hindi from Sanskrit lakṣa” (New Oxford American Dictionary).]

comments: 2

Elaine said...

One of the projects in our (relatively well-off) school district involved collecting the gently-used notebooks, back-packs, pencils, pens, etc., and distributing them for re-use by families for whom the daunting 'school supply list' was a painful expense. (I don't know if they're still doing this; we've been graduated and gone for 10 years now. But it was a great idea.)

Michael Leddy said...

Many communities have ways for people to donate (new and used). I esp. like the idea of getting “supplies” to children who need them.