By eighth grade, Agarwal was back to learning in-person and on a mission to help kids get books. Agarwal\u2019s first school book drive \u2014 originally planned as a one-time project \u2014 ended up collecting 3,000 books for The Guadalupe Center, a local Title One school.<\/p>\n
Flash forward just five years, and Agarwal\u2019s youth literacy nonprofit Believe N Books<\/a> has reached 25,000 young people. On July 1, the organization will celebrate a milestone of 250,000 books donated, having expanded beyond Florida, across the country, and into Africa.<\/p>\n Starting (and growing) a nonprofit <\/p>\n Agarwal calls her first book drive \u201cquite the process.\u201d For one excruciating week after she put donation boxes in the hallways of her school, those boxes remained empty. But by week three, they were filled to overflowing. Teresa Brook, a teacher at the independent Canterbury School that Agarwal attended, was impressed. Agarwal \u201cwas very passionate about [Believe N Books] from the get-go, very dedicated to it, rounding up her friends to do videos on YouTube, reading out loud for kids \u2014 just very dedicated\u201d says Brooks.<\/p>\n Today, the drive is an annual school tradition. \u201cFor the kids that give, it\u2019s a very good feeling,\u201d Brook says. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes this end of the project really meaningful, when you see a group of students excited to bring books to the school to give to kids, it\u2019s pretty powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n The next year, Believe N Books\u2019 success spread. Nearby students and neighboring schools co-hosted drives. Agarwal developed a system: Find a dedicated student or faculty member to take the lead, help them get the word out, set up dropboxes, and, finally, sort and pack the books before delivering them. Although the organization collects books across genres up to age18, preschool and elementary books are in highest demand.<\/p>\n As Believe N Books has grown, Agarwal has formed partnerships with students, educators, and community leaders across the country. \u201cThe initial school that I distributed the books to did a really great job connecting me with other Title One schools, other shelters, hospitals, educational facilities, tutoring centers in need of books,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She also began to work with students at Florida Gulf Coast University, a partnership that she describes as crucial. \u201cThey\u2019ve been involved from start to finish,\u201d she says, \u201cEven when I didn\u2019t have high school volunteers.\u201d Since then, Believe N Books has worked with organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs, Room to Read, and the Golisano\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n The momentum that Agarwal found in Florida pushed her to expand her mission past her home state and into New Jersey, Georgia, Louisiana, California and Pennsylvania. She grew the effort by networking with fellow student leaders. Floridian-turned-Georgian Sanjana Uppaluri helped create the Georgia location, by leading book drives and coordinating with the transitional and affordable housing nonprofit New Transition to Success.<\/a><\/p>\n Uppaluri says Agarwal\u2019s enthusiasm is contagious. Before getting involved with Believe N Books, the rising UC Berkeley freshman hadn\u2019t thought a lot about books or literacy. Now, she\u2019s all in. \u201cBooks tell stories, and they teach,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Believe N Books comes to Philly <\/p>\n As a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Agarwal has been focused on increasing Believe N Books\u2019 local impact. So far, she\u2019s established five regional book donation sites, including at Wilmington Friends School and Penn Charter. Agarwal is also partnering with Penn\u2019s Netter Center for Community Partnerships<\/a> to donate books to the Title One schools they serve and has donated books to Pennsauken, NJ-based Book Smiles<\/a> and West Oak Lane\u2019s Philly Book Bank<\/a>, based in MLK High School.<\/p>\n Her work here is especially relevant. Despite a recent $25 million investment meant to improve the city\u2019s public school reading curriculum, literacy rates have actually dropped. In an interview with Chalkbeat,<\/a> educational advocate Laura Boyce of Teach Plus, called Philly\u2019s current rates of reading proficiency \u201cextremely troubling,\u201d adding the downward trend \u201cdoesn\u2019t bode well for our future workforce or our city as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n Agarwal has faced her own challenges. She\u2019s struggled to recruit a consistent and reliable volunteer workforce to run and scale up book drives \u2014 in particular, public transit-using Penn, Drexel and Temple students haven\u2019t been able to help drive books where they need to go, and she\u2019s had to rely on family for rides. In time, maybe even in this school year, she\u2019d like to find a stabler, longer-term transportation solution.<\/p>\n Agarwal has also had to adapt to a new nonprofit landscape and challenges reaching individual schools as quickly as she could back in Florida. She\u2019s learned to adapt, however, learning (and practicing patience) as she goes.<\/p>\n Believe N Books goes abroad <\/p>\n Agarwal isn\u2019t just a distributor of free books. She\u2019s also written one. In 2024, after learning about the lack of opportunities for girls in too many African nations, she wrote and self-published Tales of African Women Trailblazers.<\/a> The 94-page volume highlights 21 African-born women, like professional soccer player Asisat Oshoala<\/a> and entrepreneur Fatoumata Ba<\/a>, who overcame adversity and emerged as national and industry leaders.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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