SATARA: Alibaba Group, online and mobile commerce company, hosted its third book donation drive as part of the larger Mission Million Books initiative. Representatives from over 500 schools and colleges came to handpick books that would benefit their students in pursuing education. Third book exhibition held at Satara, Maharashtra in association with Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust.
Mission is a pan-India initiative aimed at providing the underserved with access to quality educational materials for their growth and advancement.
On display were over 50,000 books covering Science, Maths, History, Geography, Liberal Arts, Computers, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries in different languages. Initiative has successfully empowered close to 2000 schools and colleges with 3,00,000 educational books.
“Alibaba Group works with its partners to solicit donations, collect and deliver textbooks to schools and colleges across India.”, Alibaba said.
This mission is rolled out in sync with Indian government’s efforts to enable access to quality education for all. The project seeks to donate 1 million books to 10,000 schools and colleges in India to help students in their journey for education.
Vinay Bhartia, Senior Vice President – Strategic Partnership – Alibaba.com said, “It’s a great achievement that our efforts are touching the lives of many children; education is the best gift you can give them. Our aim has been to make education accessible to students across India and serve the community at large.”
Rajiv Mehta, Trustee Ratna Nidhi Trust said, “We believe that Giving Feels Good and elevates the soul of the giver. We are running a campaign called Giving Feels Good and encouraging people to come forward and donate books. We have also devised innovative methods for book collection, such as our tie-up with the dabbawalas of Mumbai to collect books.”
The campaign has partners such as The World Bank Family Network Book Project, Ecomm Express, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Retailers Association of India, UC Web, Carnival Cinemas, TicketNew and PayTm Mall.
