Arya Samaj Greater Houston has been a force behind building the Jeevan Prabhat in Gujarat and now Pondicherry. One of the event held every year is a Readathon by the children of our DAV Sanskriti School to raise funds. Please read below an interesting article written by 9 year Amol Patil explaining this program. This year we are blessed with generous donors named Mr. and Mrs. Vinod Arora and Mr. and Mrs. Ashutosh Garg, who matched to total collection by the students. This is in addition to the pledges they made to children for reading books. This increases the contribution to almost $12,000. Last year, $ 10,000 was contributed through this program.

Devinder Mahajan

Readathon for the Children, by the Children

Building Jeevan Prabhat by Reading

By Amol Patil, 9 years

“Today’s reader is tomorrow’s leader.”

Readathon is a fundraiser organized in DAV Sanskriti School that helps the children of Jeevan Prabhat in Pondicherry, India. Jeevan Prabhat helps orphaned children of the 2004 tsunami disaster by giving them immense parental love, a proper nutritious diet, good discipline and a safe environment.

In Readathon, participants read books and collect pledges. All the money collected goes to Jeevan Prabhat. Arya Samaj Greater Houston has participated in Readathon for 5 years. This event runs for about 5 weeks, starting in the winter break and completes at the end of January. We pledge to read a certain number of books and pages. At the same time, we go to the members of Arya Samaj, our uncles and aunties and ask them to sponsor us. Many will give us some money for reading; others will give us money per book. More I read and more people we ask for pledge, more money will collect. Reading one book can take us a long way.

The children of Arya Samaj benefit from Readathon too. They read more books which can help them be better readers. My fellow students felt happy and proud knowing that they are reading books not only to increase their knowledge but also making a difference in the lives of children in India. We are blessed to have a library in the Samaj where many children’s books with morals are available. Also, there are hundreds of other books brought by our Acharya ji from India, which my mom distributed to and exchanged every Sunday. There are some very interesting eye opener stories about history of India and leaders of Arya Samaj.

This year 25 of my friends at Arya Samaj Houston participated in Readathon collected a total of $3996. The person who collected the most money $1,065 is Roma Nayyar, Amol Patil collected $470 and Trisha Gupta collected $395. Twelve other students collected $100 or more. They are Anika Tanwani, Kunal Tanwani, Kavia Gupta, Kartik Talwar, Kanika Talwar, Adwick Passi, Pooja Salhotia, Siddhant Ahuja, Neha Srivastava, M. Chadha, R. Chadha and Arjun Arora.

Similar Efforts will continue to be organized by Arya Samaj involving community, our children and members. I look forward to going to the DAV School every Sunday and participate in more activities.

Winners & Participants of the Read-A-Thon