Tuhina Chakravorty, a freshman at High School North, recently completed her Girl Scout silver award by adding to the foreign languages book collection at West Windsor Library. A member of Troop 71847, her troop leader and project advisor was Merce Willard. Her project mentor was Nita Mathur, the senior reference librarian at West Windsor Library.
Chakravorty had the idea because she likes reading and wanted to do something that benefited the West Windsor Library. She first approached Kaija Greenberg, the former branch manager. “She suggested I do this project because the library wanted to build an international collection,” says Chakravorty.
Although Chakrovorty does not read Hindi, her parents do. Her father, Niloy, runs his own consulting firm. Her mother, Sonali, is a homemaker.
She got the books from pustak.org, an online book source. “Their local representative, Abhilash Tripathi, lives in West Windsor,” she says. “He works closely with the West Windsor Library and thus was able to help me select books that the library wanted.”
Tripathi represents Bhartiya Sahita, an affiliate of pustak.org. His wife, Mamta, is actively involved with the Hindi USA West Windsor-Plainsboro chapter.
“As part of her Girl Scout Silver Award project, Tuhina contacted me with a unique idea of raising funds to build up a book collection that she planned to donate to the library’s existing foreign languages collection,” says Mathur.
“Through dedicated fundraising Tuhina succeeded in raising enough funds to build up a collection of 18 new books including classics, poetry, as well as contemporary fiction, all sure to delight the Mercer County Library patrons for years to come.”
