Ritika Chawla “40% of India’s children cannot write their names but they are waiting to write history.” I read this in 2010, an advertisement that encouraged many people like me to apply for a fellowship called Teach for India. The ad promised that I will be joining a movement that would change the nation and also my career path. And so it did. But like me there were many others who had joined the bandwagon in 2009. This fellowship, like many others that exist in India now, exposed its fellows to the realities of the Indian education system. Being in classrooms of budget private schools or government schools for two years made the socio-economic gap between the fellows and their students too huge to ignore or not do something about. Thus began the transformational journey leading to many of these fellows staying on in the development space, more so in the education sector. They chose career paths of being teachers, teacher trainers, school principals, curriculum designers, policy researchers, etc. When the first cohort of Teach for India completed their fellowship in 2011, only 20 per cent returned to the corporate world whereas 80 per cent remained in the education sector with 54 per cent working in nonprofits and 26 per cent directly contributing to the education sector. Over the years, this number has only grown with 74 per cent alumni in 2017 still working across the education ecosystem, many working directly in schools, nonprofits, corporates and also with national and local government bodies. There have also been a lot of alumni, who felt that there was a need for starting organizations with the intent of solving the multitude problems in this space and to ensure educational equity and someday narrow the socio-economic gap. The root cause might be low socioeconomic backgrounds but the issues pertained to lack of good parenting and parent investment in the learning of the children, a good healthcare system and safe and clean environment, lack of a contextualized curriculum that students could relate to and learn despite English being a foreign language for them, having skilled and empathetic teachers, as well as school leaders and many more. If you ask what motivated them to turn into entrepreneurs, or ‘edupreneurs’, they will tell you one or both of these things – either from their classroom experience or the realities of their own lives. It wasn’t a decision based on a singular moment of clarity, but a lot of gradual experiences and reflections

Dalbir Kaur Madan “The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance” – Libba Bray Library and books are my first love. Since the time I remember, books transported me to other worlds and each time I came back, my thinking was either challenged or confirmed or I was left wanting more…. My journey at One Up library, bookstudio and learning lab, started as a parent raising two curious children who loved learning. My children’s birth-city Amritsar, is a historical city, where education is still driven by traditional methodology and a myopic view towards reading. Raising two young readers in 2011, aged 12 and 15, my quest was to create a safe space with books and open a learning environment for readers to share, discuss, criticize and learn from books and have conversations with enabling adults who love books. I personally feel and believe that even though school teaches every child to read and design their literate life, it is through reading that we find ourselves and become more human. I believe that libraries are ateliers of learning and librarians perform the role of an atelierista in developing each child’s reading process. Libraries and reading have the power to develop and re-design the learning journey of each child. Schools should be measured by the content and programs they run in their libraries. Our role as parents and educators is to help every child develop the skills of critical reading and thinking. Even though ideas and dreams are powerful and beautiful, reality is hard and challenging. When I started One Up Library and Bookstore in 2011 it opened a Pandora’s box of questions, confusions and challenges for me as a reader and learner. The beauty is that today the library and my readers have helped me to embrace these confusions, questions and challenges as a part of my learning to be a curator of reading lives. Every moment we face challenges. Parents and children enter the library with pre-conceived notions about reading – reading for pleasure, for purpose, for academic outcomes, for English language proficiency, for attention, for behaviour, for self-engagement, for reflection, for a safe place to park your kid for a few hours and