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11-year-old activist launches a book drive #1000blackgirlbooks

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Poorvi Gupta
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11-year-old activist launches a book drive #1000blackgirlbooks

Fed up of reading about white boys and dogs, a Philadelphia native girl, Marley Dias, has started a revolutionary book drive called the #1000blackgirlbooks. Through this campaign Marley aims at collecting 1000 books in the form of donations from general public that have black girls as protagonists by February 1.

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All of 11, Marley is a voracious reader and an activist. The idea for this project came to Marley when she got frustrated with the books her school recommended her to read. She was stunned to see the lack of diversity and patriarchal influence in those books. Marley complained to her mother about this social need and especially named the books, “Where the Red Fern Grows” and the “Shiloh” series.

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“What are you going to do about it?” asked my mom. And I told her I was going to start a book drive, and a specific book drive, where black girls are the main characters in the book and not background characters or minor characters,” spoke Marley to Philly Voice.

Marley has already collect 400 books through donations which is almost halfway through. This project started by Marley is in collaboration with Philadelphia-founded GrassROOTS Community Foundation. Marley’s mother, Janice cofounded this community foundation seven years ago. Marley plans to give these books to a low-resources library in St. Mary, Jamaica, where Janice grew up in the spirit of giving back to their roots.

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This is not the first time that Marley is doing something for the society. Marley was honoured by a grant from Disney for her social acts and the young kid has also travelled to Ghana to feed the orphan as a way of giving back to the society.

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“I’m hoping to show that other girls can do this as well. I used the resources I was given, and I want people to pass that down and use the things they’re given to create more social action projects—and do it just for fun, and not make it feel like a chore,” expressed marley, in a report by Jezebel.

Marley has shown with her acts that age is just a number and one can always step up to help restore the society even if she is a black girl of 11 years old. Acts of goodness break the barriers of color, age and gender if the person if strong-willed to do great things in life. Our good wishes are with Marley and we hope that she grows up to be a great human being inspiring lives like she is at this age.

Books for any age group are welcomed. You may also donate for the purchase of books.

Picture Credit- Teen Vogue

gender equality #EveryWomanIsALeader #1000blackgirlbooks Black girls Book Drive Marley Dias racial diversity
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