Project Grace (National)
 
"Be the change that you want to see"  Reading Program

Princeton Juniorette is taking a stand to “be the change that they want to see” in their community.  Volunteers from the Juniorette program are taking books donated by Bitiya to Home Front, a refuge for homeless children, to read aloud to them on a monthly basis.  Bitiya’s goal via the “be the change that you want to see” reading program is to promote community service and encourage reading to expand children’s horizons.

“Window to my World” Pen Pal Program

Bitiya has joined hands with Branchburg Central Middle School to offer a glimpse into another world for students via a pen pal exchange program. The exchange program is for suburban students in Branchburg, NJ and village children from Ashiana Orphanage in Panchkula, India. Supervised communications via letters and photographs will provide an insight exchange into two very diverse worlds.  Bitiya’s intent via this pen pal program is for children to expand their world views.

Partners: Global Youth Connect, USA + PPES, India 

In 2009, Bitiya is proud to partner with Global Youth Connect (GYC), an organization that provides high quality cultural enrichment programs to students across the world. Global Youth Connect (GYC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides high quality cultural enrichment programs to youth across the world utilizing structured curriculum and leveraging technology. The program is an integrated school-day program and a high-interest supplement to curriculum requirements for reading, writing, social studies and the creative arts.

During this three month long program, GYC will connect the kids from 6th grade New York public school with the 6th graders at Pardada Pardadi Educational Society School in Uttar Pradesh, India. In their weekly sessions, students will explore a variety of topics including geography, history, current events, art, music, food and their own beliefs about India. Students will also practice reading comprehension, math and writing skills. Similarly, the students at PPES will explore the same topics about the United States! The sessions will be taught in a fun and engaging way that encourages team-work and utilizes photos, video, the telephone and mail from each country to teach core concepts.

Students will also create and share personal photo albums, learning about a foreign currency and talking to their new friends in India. We believe students in both countries will enjoy the new adventure.

Books Collection  

Bitiya would like to take this opportunity to thank ALL of you who have contributed to our Book Drive.  Without everyone’s collective efforts our Book Drive wouldn’t have been such a phenomenal success. Our main contributor, Scarsdale High School’s, 12th grade math teacher, Monica Palekar, worked with Scarsdale students and teachers to contribute over 340 Math textbooks, 4,200 English textbooks, and 157 Social Studies books that we have disseminated to several projects.  Scarsdale High School also placed a write up about Bitiya in the high school’s newspaper, The Maroon, detailing our work.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff and students at Scarsdale High School for their donations.  We hope to continue this relationship well into the future!

Approximately 400 books have been donated to Union Settlement, for inner city children in Harlem, New York.  The balance of the books collected has been sent to Books for Africa that will further ship out these books to various needy locations with Africa.