VIT graduate’s ‘Letters of Love’ acts as a connect to refugee children

Within months, she had a plan: use children in the country to connect through letters with their peer in these nations under turmoil - doubly achieving the aim of helping the refugees, as well as sensitising local children.

That was two years ago. Today, the 25-yearold has successfully established her initiative titled ‘Letters of Love’, connecting thousands of children globally, and engaging volunteers from all over in fund-raising projects, meet-and-greet events, classes for kids, and writing letters, etc. “However, the feather in our cap is the latest news: we are now an official member of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ #With Refugees Coalition – an association of NGOs and youth groups across the world,” shares an excited Pooja, who has left her engineering degree behind to take on this project full-time. 

With over 13,000 letters sent and received in 2017, the project is well on its way to becoming bigger, with each passing year. “We are a core team of 25, currently spread across the world. As for our country, the idea is to spread awareness, by enabling sensitisation sessions for school and university students aiming to cultivate empathy, enabling pen pals and help each children discover their potential as an agent of change in society. Teachers and education facilitators can access these modules anywhere,” she says.

For next year, Letters of Love has expanded its operations with regional managers in USA, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, and is partnering with Human Relief Foundation (HRF), to deliver letters to children entrapped by war in Syria as a first. “We also have our ‘Pen Pal’ project, where around 500 children from the country will be writing to children entrapped by war in Syria and under siege in Gaza, and these children, upon receiving their letters on New Year’s, will be writing back to their newly-made friends in our country,” adds Pooja.