StorHub gets on the same page as Books Beyond Borders in giving back to society

StorHub recently got the chance to hear about the life story of someone who is certainly in the good books of underprivileged children in Nepal who are now blessed with an education thanks to him. He is none other than Randall Chong, the founder of Books Beyond Borders, a social business committed to using 100% of its donations and profits received from secondhand books sales to raise funds for education in rural regions of Nepal.

It all began for Randall with a personal challenge, which was to do something that scared him. The challenge alone was enough to psych him up, giving him the courage to overcome his fears. He decided to take a one-month break from his career to go to Nepal where there was limited access to the internet. While trekking there, he crossed paths with a young teenage boy but quickly noticed the communication barrier between them and resorted to interacting with him by gesticulating. Randall later found out that the boy’s job was to carry goods on his back to deliver them between villages as a local porter. On top of that, he soon learnt that it’s a common phenomenon for young children to be working rather than attending school. It all made sense after Randall dropped by a local primary school and saw for himself that no resources were available there; teachers were absent from classes and students were given no reading materials.

Having witnessed firsthand why those children were deprived of the opportunity to learn at school, Randall decided to quit his job and set his mind to raising money full-time for children’s education. To ensure that these children in Nepal can benefit to the fullest, Books Beyond Borders collaborates with their local publishers to help boost the country’s economy and so that Nepalese authors are the ones writing children’s books published in their national language.

The Covid-19 outbreak resulted in the closure of schools in Nepal, which negatively impacted the progress that Books Beyond Borders had made. The situation eventually worked in Randall’s favour as the pandemic meant that more people were spending more time reading at home and clearing books out of their homes. As a result of that, Books Beyond Borders’ business got back on track as they started to receive and sell more books.

As the social enterprise continued to flourish, Randall quickly ran out of space in the spare room of his grandfather’s home where the secondhand books were originally kept. He later turned to StorHub self storage to enable underprivileged children to get the luxury of reading.

StorHub continues to stand by our CSR values of changing the lives of people in our community for the better through lending a hand to our beneficiaries in their meaningful causes. As their enabler, what makes our efforts worthwhile is being the stepping stone for thriving communities and for individuals to work towards being the best they can be.

At StorHub, we are all about helping you maintain a clutter-free living space to improve your quality of life. With our newest additions to our network of accessible storage facilities in Singapore at Yishun and Kallang Avenue, we now have a total of 13 facilities conveniently located near you. Contact us today at +65 6337 2000 for more information on our exciting promotions and to get a quote from our friendly storage specialists.

All images by courtesy of Books Beyond Borders.