“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” (Lao Tzu).
In the case of Syeda Basarat Kazim, it is definitely true that her successful journey has achieved many impressive milestones by taking small but steady steps all the way.
Growing up in the 1970s in Pakistan, Basarat realized that children living nearby were not going to school. So, as a teenager, she started classes for them on the side veranda of her family home. These classes continued for a few months. Once the children picked up the basics, she was able to convince their mothers to enroll them in neighbourhood schools. Not long after, one of her teachers at the Convent of Jesus and Mary called her and asked her to teach English to Grades 7 and 8.
Basarat laughs and recalls, “I was teaching girls just five or so years younger than me. That became one of my most beautiful experiences ever. We completed all the essays that needed to be written, as well as all the comprehensions and précis required. However, much more important than that was the bond created with ‘my students’. Most of them responded keenly and from the heart. One special 10-year-old went on to study at the University of Cambridge and taught at Kinnaird College for Women for many years. She remains a very dear friend.”
Eventually, Basarat was invited to work with students and teachers at the initial Lahore Grammar School in Lahore, which went on to become one of the leading school systems in the country.
Meanwhile, in Lahore, Dr. Juanita Baker, an American who lived with her husband, Dr. Richard Baker, in Pakistan for many years during the 1970s, started an innovative project called “The Book Bus.” The Book Bus was a novel idea: a discarded double-decker bus that once plied crowded Pakistani roads was converted into Pakistan’s first children’s library. It had books, not passengers, and was colourful, catching the attention of children and adults alike. This bus was stationary and parked in the Main Market, Gulberg, one of Lahore’s small triangular spaces. Later, this area was developed into a park.
The small library had books solely for children aged five to fifteen. Lots of books came from the original donation by the Bakers. These were books published in the US. Most books that children were able to purchase in Lahore at that time were books published in the UK.
Basarat’s own children were still young when she became involved in The Book Bus. It was renamed Alif Laila (Stories of 1001 Nights) and became the Alif Laila Book Bus Society. That involvement became her life’s work.
When she visited government-run schools, Basarat noticed so much that needed improvement. The children were learning by rote; there was no joy in learning; the number of students in each class was too high for any child to get individual care or attention. She wanted the children of Pakistan to get what her own children were getting and realized: “It was not too late to seek a newer world.”
Since then, Basarat and The Book Bus have played a major role in the spread of the library movement in Pakistan. From a stationary double-decker bus to mobile libraries—a bus, vans, rickshaws, camels, boats, and even a yak—the Alif Laila Book Bus Society runs them all.
Basarat explains proudly, “We have also set up libraries in hundreds of schools, distributed 100 book box libraries to over 700 schools all over Pakistan as a tribute to IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People, and the work it does for literacy around the world. It gives me the greatest pleasure to share that eighteen organizations are now running rickshaw libraries and two are running mobile buses.”
As things tend to do when passion and commitment are involved, they have snowballed for Basarat. Making connections with like-minded professionals in other countries, Basarat and Alif Laila Book Bus Society set up the Pakistan Section of IBBY in 2006. Since then, they have worked together very closely. IBBY, with its headquarters in Switzerland, has as its mission:
• to promote international understanding through children’s books
• to give children everywhere the opportunity to have access to books with high literary and artistic standards
• to encourage the publication and distribution of quality children’s books, especially in developing countries
• to provide support and training for those involved with children and children’s literature
• to stimulate research and scholarly works in the field of children’s literature
• to protect and uphold the Rights of the Child according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
IBBY was there to support children and literacy whenever a crisis arose in Pakistan. The Alif Laila Book Bus Society received funding from IBBY for their Books Build Bridges campaign in 2010, when areas of Pakistan were inundated with floods. Once again, the IBBY Children in Crisis Fund responded immediately after the floods of 2022, and they were able to repair rooms in government schools in Sindh that had been destroyed by floods and set up Humara Kutub Khanas (Our Libraries) there. These rooms have created a mini revolution in their areas. They are so colourful and alive that they have become the focus of creative activities for the school and the community as well. Mothers who had never visited their children’s schools have started coming to connect with their children’s teachers and education because they like to sit in the bright room.
IBBY was there to help and support with the Yamada Fund and when Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assassinated, the then IBBY Foundation, now the IBBY Trust, provided funds to print colourful posters about the joy of reading in all languages used in Pakistan and to be distributed countrywide, to provide hope to a very sad country.
Working with a global organization like IBBY has not been a one-way street. Basarat explains, “As a tribute to the work IBBY does in all its National Sections, we celebrated IBBY’s 65th birthday by sending out 100 books to ten schools in Pakistan that did not have colourful books for children to read, for every year, making it 650 book boxes. Happily, the project exceeded its goals, and we were able to distribute boxes to 700+ schools, as well as a smaller number of books to 332 recipient schools in Muzaffarabad, in one of our training programs. This became possible through books donated by Hoopoe Books, First Book, Big Bad Boo, Oxford University Press, Maqbool Books, Book Group, and donations that children collected in their schools.
The Alif Laila Book Bus Society has worked on attitudinal change and carried out multiple workshops for teachers to “enter the child’s world” as well as workshops on how to make cost-effective classroom teaching aids, with the help of the children, so that drab and boring classrooms can be converted into happy, colourful ones. Basarat firmly believes that joy will help to educate and encourage children to read.
Since 2015, the society has been working closely with Culture, Creativity and Education, based in Newcastle, UK. Alif Laila’s CEO Amna Kazmi is a certified trainer and conducts various trainings for teachers.
In 2024, IBBY, with sections in over 85 countries, elected Pakistan’s Basarat Kazim as its President. The girl who started by educating children on the porch of her family home is now recipient of the IBBY iREAD Outstanding Reading Promoter Award, as well as the Nelson Mandela Award, The Fatima Jinnah Medal from the Punjab Government, the Freedom Through Literacy Grand Prize, Gold Stevie Award for Most Innovative Woman of the Year, and the Women Making Waves Award. Basarat has taken all of these recognitions in calm, dignified stride. But they have also strengthened the work Alif Laila does and brought it to the attention of people in other countries, as well as in Pakistan.
Knowing how difficult it is to obtain funding for non-profit projects like the Alif Laila Book Bus Society, I asked how they were able to become such a successful organization with international support from sponsors like Oxfam. She replied, smiling, “I must confess that anyone who visits Alif Laila Book Bus, children or donors, falls in love with the place and contributes in the way they can.”
She adds wistfully, “Perhaps our ask was never big; I was reticent in doing that. Maybe Alif Laila could have got more funding if we had sought out donors more. We always welcomed anybody who came, but the focus was always on what we ourselves could do for the children. In some ways, that paid heavy dividends because we were forced early on to think of ways to make the organization self-sustaining. We never became the bubble created by donors that became so big that it had to pop.”
Sponsors do adopt projects. All projects are up on Global Giving and have collected substantial donations there. The work can be viewed regularly on Facebook and on the website (aliflaila.org.pk). And, last but not least, the children’s books that Basarat has written herself in Urdu, and which have been illustrated by emerging Pakistani artists, have been awarded by the National Book Foundation and form a steady source of income for Alif Laila, since schools and the government purchase the books for libraries.
Currently, Alif Laila has many projects, including rickshaw libraries, a boat library, and camel libraries. These projects are all run by people on the ground. Alif Laila has always believed in making all the work they do cost-effective. They have not set up offices in all the places where they work because they believe in collaboration and getting together with people who are already present there. This reduces costs substantially. Alif Laila pays for the camel herders’ time and for the person who accompanies the camel, also for operating the boat, and for the teachers who facilitate the children.
Basarat looks at the achievements of Alif Laila with satisfaction and pride. “I am grateful,” she says, “for the more than four decades of my life that have gone towards my passion: creating a space in Pakistan that speaks to children, is owned by them, and where their creative and critical thinking is enhanced. Pakistan needs problem solvers, and I remain deeply grateful that Alif Laila has led from the front to do that in its own modest way.”
But perhaps her biggest achievement is the fact that reading has made a difference to everyone who has been involved with Alif Laila. The organization focuses mostly on girls—in a country where education for girls was often an obstacle—but boys can also become members of the library. Basarat smiles as she says, “It is so wonderful to receive varied messages from young adults who were members at Alif Laila through the years. Different people, at different stages of their lives; some not in Pakistan anymore. The core message is the same; Alif Laila played a prominent part in their lives and is one of their most cherished childhood memories.”
And then she adds thoughtfully, “In this fractured and broken world, it is necessary for children to form connections with each other. Books build bridges: reading about other children deepens understanding and empathy, and, when possible, talking to other children does the same. I would be very interested in schools in Canada connecting with schools and the projects Alif Laila runs in Pakistan.”
References
Alif Laila Book Bus Society can be accessed at: globalgiving.org with the Org# 67160.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margriet Ruurs
Margriet Ruurs is a Canadian children’s book author. The Pakistani Book Bus is featured in her book My Librarian is a Camel.
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Fall 2025 issue.
