The Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day re­ceived more than 1,500 books for dis­tri­b­u­tion to chil­dren from needy fam­i­lies. In ac­cept­ing the do­na­tion, Min­is­ter Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who thanked the Grow­ing Lead­ers Foun­da­tion for the ges­ture, said the books would be giv­en out to chil­dren in de­pressed ar­eas around the coun­try. "This do­na­tion is in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment's plans to give chil­dren books in­stead of toys, es­pe­cial­ly around Christ­mas time," he said.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said his min­istry was al­so con­cerned about chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. "The Gov­ern­ment plans to build a $11.5 mil­lion cen­tre for the dis­abled and al­so in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes to di­ag­nose learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties at a young age," he said. Founder of the Grow­ing Lead­ers, Sallyanne Del­la Casa, said the do­na­tion was part of the group's work in T&T. "We have im­port­ed over 17,000 books that will be used to es­tab­lish li­braries in schools across the coun­try," she said, adding that the li­braries would be named af­ter lo­cal au­thors and writ­ers who were some­times over­looked.