Thái Hải Đăng (right) presents boxes of books to Phan Si Păng Secondary School in the northern mountainous town of Sa Pa. — Photo infonet.vietnamnet.vn

HÀ NỘI — In just six months, Thái Hải Đăng's project Sách đến tay em (Books to children) has given nearly hundreds of books to students in remote areas.

However, Đăng's efforts to empower young people with knowledge started long before this project began. 

The final-year student of the Academy of Journalism and Communication told Infonet online newspaper: “I started establishing these cases with books when I was an eleventh-grade student at Lưu Văn Liệt High School in Vĩnh Long Province. 

“Back then, the school didn’t have a book club, so I asked my seniors from the project Sách và Hành động (Books and Action) in Cần Thơ City to help me set one up.”

With the help of Nguyễn Thị Vân, the founder of the project Tiếp bước tương lai (Empower the future) which aims to cultivate a reading culture for students across the country, Đăng started collecting books for his school club. 

When he entered university in Hà Nội, Đăng went online to look up book clubs in the capital, through which he found and quickly became an active member of Thái Hà Books Lovers' Club.

Đăng said: “One time, when I planned to travel to Sa Pa, I wanted to make the trip more meaningful so I came up with the idea of donating books to fill a small bookshelf for students in the town." 

Many people from his club supported his idea, but each person only have one or two books to donate. Đăng then went back and forth across the capital city on his bike to collect enough books for the project.

He said: “That was summertime, so it was very hot and it is not easy to go collecting books. I was drenched in sweat after every trip. One time, my bike broke down and all the books fell off, they get all dirty and tattered and I felt so bad. 

“My rented room was tiny and the books occupied most of its space, so my meals were very simple so that the books didn’t get all smelly.”

The result of all those hard-working days cycling across Hà Nội was nine boxes of books for Sapa Primary School and Phan Si Păng Secondary School in the mountainous town of Sa Pa. 

Đăng organises the books he collect for his project. — Photo infonet.vietnamnet.vn

In December last year, Đăng’s project gave seven more of these bookcases to schools in Bắc Giang and Hòa Bình provinces, as well as Ba Vì District in Hà Nội, among other locations. 

Đăng said: “At first I felt that this requires so much hard work, and only planned to donate one book case for my trip to Sa Pa. But now there have been nearly a dozen more.

“I didn’t think that many people knew about my project ‘Sách đến tay em’ and supported me that much. I started off alone, but now I have many others by my side and help me.”

Filling the book cases is no easy task for Đăng and his team, from working with bookstores for the best prices to organising and transporting the books, among numerous other things. 

Đăng said: “It would be a lie if I say it is not tiring. But in the future, I hope to continue delivering books to places that didn’t have the means to have their own libraries, especially in the mountainous and remote areas. 

“At these locations, donating warm clothes and food is also necessary, but I think that in the long run, students need to read books to enrich their knowledge. Each book they open bears the hope for a bright future. 

“I hope that each person can contribute a part, whether it is the spirit, knowledge, idea, effort, time, books, finance or other items, so that we can cultivate the reading culture together.” — VNS