Books best companions of kids in tribal settlements

Coimbatore: When children in cities were whiling the lockdown period away in electronic gadgets and on social media, close to 50 children in tribal settlements in Anamalai taluk had spent it in a useful manner – reading books.
Thanks to the Centre for Justice and Peace, an NGO, that distributed more than 200 books to the children a couple of days before the Lockdown1.0 came into effect.
Samyuktha, 11, of Kakkakothiparai, a tribal settlement, was happy that she received a comic book before the lockdown. Since then, she had spent her time in delving into the book every night before going to bed. Once she completed the book, she exchanged it with her friend who was reading a different book in her settlement.
“Once a child completes a book, he/she would exchange it with her friends and it goes on till all the books are read. Then, we would exchange the bunch of books with the neighbouring settlements,” said C Velumani, a volunteer assisting the children in reading the books.
It is not just the children, adults and elders are also reading the books during their free time, she said.
To inculcate reading habits among the tribal children and to assist them in their learning process, about two years ago the centre started evening classes in 15 tribal settlements including Kakkakothiparai, KPM Colony, Sarkarpathy, Kuzhipatti and Vepparai in Coimbatore and Tirupur districts.
“During the classes, books on different subjects like non-fiction, science, general knowledge, biographies, tribals and their culture were distributed to them,” founder of the centre S Thangaraj said.
A volunteer from Mudaliarpathi settlement, D Savithri said she has witnessed a huge change in the mindset of the children after they were introduced to the world of books.
“Earlier, teachers would often visit our village to enroll students who had dropped out. But now, even the children who had refused to go to schools had started going to the schools regularly. Many of them had even shown willingness even to travel to study further,” she said.