Crayons of Hope Foundation
Nonprofit Organization Management - Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Crayons of Hope Foundation Employees
Crayons of Hope Foundation Details
Using just a postcard and a box of crayons we are connecting the world's children, two at a time. The children exchange one postcard every month on a theme that they select together with their teachers. Themes range from the meanings of their names – to help them build a sense of identity, to the city they live in – to help them understand their immediate world. From the geography of their country to its history – from health to environment – covering a wide variety of topics and issues concerning them, and helping them develop ideas and understanding about these issues. Crayons of Hope Foundation today works with thousands of vulnerable children across India, helping them share and develop a sense of identity, hope and friendship together with each other. We soon realized that what flows in the postcards depend on the stimulus the kids receive from the world around them - often a cynical and bleak world. What can we do to change this? Give them books. Because in spite of everything that can go wrong and stay wrong around them, books will transcend all of that, protect them and help them grow. And so we started Wall O Books – a nationwide program to give them access to books and help them develop a world view. Why a wall? Because these children live and study in cramped places where space is a luxury. We take a wall, put a really cool bookshelf on it made out of an empty gunny bag, and start off a tiny, big library with 100 books for 100 children. The kids build it entirely with their own hands as well as elect a li'l librarian :) We circulate the books within the network so that each kid can access thousands of books making this network the largest library for vulnerable children in the country. We have built 100 Wall O Books so far. We want to do this in all 29 states in India, 100 Wall O Books in each state, each covering a minimum of 100 children, in total potentially covering 290,000 children.
