Nowadays, students all over the country are finding ways to volunteer in their communities. School organizations promoting service have seen their chapters flourish. However, there is rarely much spirit in the act of giving back. Most students only find themselves lending a helping hand to collect hours that will help pad their college applications and we can’t really blame them. There is one student, however, that has showed a true passion for giving back and he is being rewarded for his efforts as a leader in the community.

Senior Sujaan Lal, founder and president of the Racquet Readers, an upstart literacy-promoting organization in the Austin area, was featured on the KVUE morning news Saturday, January 28th.The featurette highlighted the efforts the he has made in donating books and mentoring underprivileged kids in East Austin.

The interview with Ashley Wilde lasted 3 and half minutes and included 4 other members of Lal’s team who joined his effort early on. Lal and his partners talked about their future plans for the initiative including an Austin-wide mentoring program that would utilize volunteers from various high school campuses.

“I first heard about this initiative when I saw the Racquet Readers website and I thought it would be a good piece to run on our Weekend Daybreak segment to showcase student life in Austin,” said Wilde

The idea for this guild of giving was rooted more in serendipity and opportunity than a focused vision. It began in Lal’s freshman year volunteering as a tennis coach and mentor for the Central Tennis Texas Association (CTTA), a non-profit organization that provides low-cost tennis lessons and jump-start programs for disadvantaged children in the East Austin area.

During his time under the blistering heat of a mid summers day, he realized that he could do much more than just teach tennis.

“Volunteering with CTTA in the summers made me realize how widespread the need was and I felt like I could do more than just use my expertise as a tennis player to help. I had always felt somewhat inadequate not being able to help the poor back home in India, so I jumped at the opportunity to help out,” said Lal.

He began working closely with the president of CTTA, Sarah Pernell, who expressed a need for books for her summer reading programs. Lal began by collecting books from local bookstores including Half-Price books and Book Worm and donating them to CTTA.

“At HPB we have are passionate about books. Part of that is being committed to promoting literacy and the Racquet Readers have helped us move toward our goal of education Austin,” said regional branch manager Emily Bruce.

By December 2012, Lal’s group had collected and given away more than 8,000 books to CTTA children and 17 Austin public schools. Their books have reached McLane Children’s Hospital and head start programs in outlying Austin counties through the Texans in Motion program. Since then he has been joined by 4 other Westwood tennis players, including seniors Rohan Makhija and Aarti Bhat and sophomores Smirthi Mahadevan and Sanjit Kumar who helped coin the group’s slogan: “The Racquet Readers: Today’s Readers, Tomorrow’s Leaders.”

“I joined the only a couple months ago, but I have to say working with close friends and people you appreciate makes it feel like I have been here for years. Our strength lies in our camaraderie,” said sophomore Smrithi Mahadevan.

The organization also has representatives in Dallas and has worked with a Houston counterpart, aptly named the “Reading Aces”, to extend its reach into other cities. Moving forward, the group plans to bolster the mentoring part of its agenda by creating S.T.A.R.T. (Students Teaching and Reading Together) clubs in high schools in the Round Rock ISD area. The program will enlist the help of domestic clubs like National Honor Society chapters and sport teams to go to a designated recreational center to help kids with their homework and distribute books.

“I only asked for some books. I didn’t expect them to do all this. I guess this is one of those instances where taking an inch and making it a mile has paid off,” said Pernell.

Thus far, the Racquet Readers have distributed over 17,100 books and counting and see no end in sight. Visit www.racquetreaders.com for more information.