Welcome to

Here’s the story…

It all started with one school trip to Karjat, Maharashtra, when we visited a school full of bright, happy children from a village. Their smiles only matched by their eagerness to learn. It was their first day of school in a new session, and yet, so different from the first days that I have experienced.

For most of us, the first day at school after vacations means opening that brand new pencil box and then filling it with  colourful pencils, erasers, sharpeners, rulers, pens, sketch pens, calculator, sticky notes, glue, and then sipping water in a cool, new water bottle, carrying favourite snacks in that new airtight snack box. That new football jersey, those house colour caps, new socks, new shoes, new school bag…Ah! That feeling of “I am all set to conquer the world!”

As the days go by, a pencil here, an eraser there, a ruler thereafter, a pen after that…sometimes the water bottle, sometimes the snack box…things just get left behind somewhere, somehow they get lost and land up in the LOST PROPERTY department of the school!

Lost things stay there unclaimed for weeks and at times even for months.

Then there were those students I had visited, who had shown up, bright and cheerful, with a torn bag, a dirty polythene pouch that held a half-broken pencil, a sharp blade to sharpen it, a smudged ruler if they were lucky, and maybe a pen if the family had enough to provide.

I came back home with many thoughts. The next day when I went to school and saw all that was lying in the lost property department, a smile came to my face and I silently thanked all my friends who had lost these things…because I had just got an idea!

An idea called Lostpropertyfound.com.

With the support of all the beautifully flourishing schools in our cities, we can bring joy and excitement in the lives of lesser-privileged students. All we need is to simply collect the unclaimed articles from the lost property department of the privileged schools and hand them over to the lesser ones, giving their learning journey a shine, a highlight, a brighter spark.

One person cannot do it all, so I seek your support to bring this dream to reality, one school at a time.

It’s almost as if it’s good to lose things sometimes… 

Radha Malhotra
@lostpropertyfound.com