I am going to talk about 3 things today; about people, money and systems.
The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual. – Vince Lombardi
A close-knit team is the backbone of any successful organisation. Although Bookworm appears to be a romantic place to be in and to work in, when you get involved with us; the intensity strikes people. Some people could handle it, some couldn’t. It is always a struggle to find dedicated people to work with us. Although we are a relatively low funded and a small insular organisation, we remunerate people with professional fees; but the kind of work we do requires the team to pull together by putting 300% of their own self. This also means the small team has to be involved in many things to make projects fly which in turn puts immense pressure on the team.
But the joy of sharing books with children growing readers, encouraging thinking and literacy in populations who otherwise would never have had the chance to engage with books, of seeing children running to see us when we go to schools and our mobile outreach sites is also invaluable. May be this is what keeps the scale balanced for the team. We are constantly looking for people who believe in books, stories and to work with children.
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” Ayn Rand
Sharing the joy of books will give immense happiness, but that won’t fill stomachs; for that one needs money to buy bread and butter. Over the last few years we have received small donations from friends and family. Our jumble sale supports some percentage of the Libraries in Schools program. We raise some revenue from our Cholta walking tours program and our Book Fair program but these are small amounts enabled by a selfless core team who never take money out of the Bookworm corpus.
We work with 24 schools in the state and out of which two are supported by Alban Couto Primary School Library Project. One of the Bookworm parents supports the rent for our library space in Taleigao which is why we are still being able to function as an activity center for children after our neighbour in our previous premise complained about us being a ‘nuisance’ when children do activities there. One corporate funder supports one of our six mobile outreach program sites. The kind of work we want to do with schools and the community requires good amount funding. We are always in the lookout for funders to support the work. If you can support us in anyway, please get in touch with us.
“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.” ― Albert Einstein
After people may be it’s the systems, procedures and protocols that makes the organisation efficient, punctual and gives it all other positive qualities. If you ask me “Are you organised?” I will say “Yes!” If you ask me again, I will say “We are more organised than before”. At Bookworm now we have planning and reporting systems on our left, right and centre that helps us plan, collaborate, execute, report and document the work we do. It has been evolving over time and it’s getting better. We are closer to an efficient working team than ever before. We always look for better and systematic ways to do things and sometimes we end up in catch-22 situations. One thing that keeps us going is the perseverance, to keep our eyes on the goal and keep going. We will continue to work towards delivering better as we fine tune our systems and processes.
Our struggles are many, our joys are manifold. Our supports are pillars of strength, we urge you to help us build a stronger foundation.
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