Lost Your Textbooks in the Chennai Floods? Send a WhatsApp Message to These Numbers

As Chennai is fighting hard to return to normalcy after the devastating rains, many students in the city are extremely worried about how they will cope with their studies now. Other than missing almost a month of school and college, they have also lost all their textbooks and notebooks in the floods.

To help such students, two young men – A Vivek and his brother Vivin, launched a very useful initiative on WhatsApp on December 6.

Source: Flickr

They spread the message that students can send their requirements to them on WhatsApp, and they will supply all the textbooks. For this, they are sourcing books from across Tamil Nadu. They received about 25 requests immediately after starting.

24-year-old Vivek has just finished his ME from St Joseph’s College of Engineering. “We are collecting funds from India and abroad and buying books for school and college students, according to the requirement,” he told The Times of India.

Students who want books can WhatsApp Vivin at 9677035963, or Vivek at 9566180758.

Other than this duo, many individuals and organizations are trying to help students as much as they can. V Sridhar, who owns a book store in Mylapore, knows that it is difficult to get many textbooks at this time of the year. So he is planning to get them from Delhi and will also distribute free textbooks, notebooks and stationary to the needy.

Members of the Senior Citizens Group of Besant Nagar (SCGOBN) are requesting people to donate textbooks and notebooks and they plan to distribute them among students. SCGOBN was founded in 2012 as a forum for seniors and Prof. V Chandrasekhar is the president of the group. To help SCGOBN, you can drop off books at B 12/12, 25th Cross Street, Besant Nagar or contact Chandrasekhar at 9884224480.

Manigandan, a mechanical engineering student of Thangavelu College, lost all his books in his shanty at Surya Nagar. As his exams are scheduled for January, he requested many people to help him, and also wrote a post about it on Facebook. 20-year-old Vinay Kumar, a final year civil engineering student at Anna University, noted the status and knew that he had to do something. So he travelled about 30km on Sunday morning to give his first semester engineering books to Manigandan, who currently lives at a relief camp in Anna University.

“He had brought books for all the six subjects. I couldn’t thank him enough. I can now prepare hard and do well,” Manigandan told The New Indian Express.

As many students would be struggling to cope with the loss of their homes, and worried about their studies too, educational institutions are planning to help them through counselling sessions. They will reassure the students once they are back, and will also help them get the books they have lost.

The government has decided to start distributing books from next week. According to S Kannappan, Director of School Education, 46,000 books have been distributed in the districts so far.

Featured image credit: Twitter

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