Our Work
📚 One Bookshelf Library Program
Our flagship program — simple, scalable, and impactful. We set up a single bookshelf library in schools, stocked with 500–700 carefully curated books for children. These libraries are managed by the school community, empowering teachers and students to take ownership of the reading culture.
Every child receives a library card, encouraging responsibility and the joy of borrowing books.
Over the past 18 years, we’ve established 1,700+ libraries, reaching and inspiring over 5,00,000 children across India to fall in love with reading.
💻 Jr Aryabhatta Digital Literacy Program
Empowering children with hands-on computer skills — one school at a time.
Named after India’s legendary mathematician and astronomer, the Jr Aryabhatta Program brings practical digital literacy to children in under-served schools.
We believe that true computer learning happens through hands-on experience, not theory alone. However, most schools we work with lack the infrastructure and funds to run a full-fledged computer lab.
Our solution: a mobile digital lab in a backpack.
We carry 25 lightweight laptops to schools, set up a fully functional computer lab right in the classroom, and ensure every child gets direct hands-on access. After the session, the mobile lab moves to the next school — spreading digital literacy efficiently and cost-effectively.
🚀 Impact so far:
- 6,00,000+ children trained in the last 5 years
- Mobile-first approach for low-resource environments
- Interactive curriculum designed for foundational skills in computers and digital awareness
“If children can’t go to a computer lab, let the lab go to them.”
📖 Akshar Bharati Reading Club (ABRC)
Because books alone aren’t enough — we turn classrooms into vibrant reading communities.
While access to books is essential, we realized that books alone don’t build a reading habit. Children need an environment of engagement and encouragement to truly fall in love with reading.
That insight gave birth to the Akshar Bharati Reading Club (ABRC) — a program that transforms every classroom into an active reading club.
Each club meets bi-weekly for one hour, led by our trained staff (not schoolteachers, who are often overburdened). Every session begins with storytelling — a universal favorite among children. We follow a simple, powerful model:
- One story is narrated to the class
- Five children are selected to tell one story each in the next session
- This creates a loop where every child hears at least 10 stories a month, mostly told by their peers
- Children are encouraged to read one book per week and share these stories at home
This peer-driven model builds confidence, comprehension, and a lifelong love for reading.
📊 Impact so far:
- Active in 200+ schools, reaching 60,000 children
- Targeting 1,00,000 children in the 2025–26 academic year
- Creating thousands of young storytellers and confident communicators
“Every child has a story to tell. We just give them the stage.”
🌱 Sasya Shyamala Bharati – Urban Forest Program
Greening schools, nurturing hearts. A tribute to the phrase from Vande Mataram: “Sasya Shyamala, Malayaja Sheetala…”
With the vision of cultivating deep ecological awareness and love for nature among children, Akshar Bharati has launched a unique environmental program — Sasya Shyamala Bharati. The goal is simple yet transformative:
Create a dense, thriving urban forest in every school, using the Miyawaki method.
🌳 Key Features:
- 500 to several thousand trees planted in each school
- Automated watering systems to ensure sustainability
- QR code for every tree to track health and growth
- Every child becomes a “Tree Friend” — personally assigned to care for one or more trees
- Children name their trees, monitor them, and record their observations
- Weekly hour-long forest engagement activities to build lifelong bonds with nature
- Tree health is monitored weekly, and any dying trees are replaced
This program goes beyond planting — it’s about building personal, emotional connections between children and trees. Through this hands-on experience, children learn about:
- Tree species and their life cycles
- The value of biodiversity and native ecology
- The responsibility of nurturing life
📍 Pilot project launched in 2025
🎯 Aiming to scale to dozens of schools in the coming years
“When every child grows up with a forest, we grow a generation that protects the Earth.”