BBK DAV’s Kora Kagaz Club helps cut paper waste, aid needy students

Amritsar, September 19

Recycling discarded notebooks and distributing them among the underprivileged students, the Kora Kagaz Club at BBK DAV College for Women has been supporting two causes—- helping the needy students and sensitising people towards the environment by cutting down on paper waste. Started five years back in collaboration with a Chennai-based youngster and 70 odd volunteers of BBK DAV College for Women, the Kora Kagaz Club has managed to get several schools and colleges to collaborate for the cause, donating notebooks while engaging students of the same school to work voluntarily towards collecting and segregating the discarded notebooks.

Several institutions including Bhavan’s SL School and Sri Ram Ashram are associated with them and provide them with free of cost notebooks prepared by segregating used notebooks and binding the unused pages into new notebooks. Kora Kagaz Club also put up a stall of these notebooks at the Mahatma Hansraj Library of the college, at a two-day book exhibition titled ‘Explore Worlds in Words…A Book Exhibition to Inspire’ in continuation of the International Literacy Day celebrations. Principal Dr Pushpinder Walia said that such initiatives keep students connected with the community and help them imbibe core human values and do their bit towards resource conservation.

The exhibition was inaugurated by Dr Taunalyn Rutherford, professor and historian, Brigham Young University, USA and Principal Dr Walia. Prof Rutherford also interacted with the members of Kora Kagaz Club to know about their unique initiative. Meanwhile at the exhibition, a large number of books on different subjects were displayed, ranging from course books to history, mythology, self-help and books for competitive exam preparation and fiction. Besides students, the teaching staff of the college also attended the exhibition, aimed at encouraging the habit of reading and staying connected with books.

Dr Walia said that such events aim at inculcating the habit of reading among students in this digital era. “Books enhance one’s creative ability and help understand the world in a better way. In time, where e-books and everything digital has taken over the traditional system of gaining knowledge, picking up a book has become a rarity, which needs to be revived.”

College librarian Swati Dutta said that the main purpose of organising such a book exhibition is to strengthen the existing collection of the college library.