Building Reading Habits

Beyond Scholarships: Building Reading Habits At Yaan Foundation, our support for scholarship recipients extends well beyond financial assistance. We actively engage selected students in a range of talent and skill development initiatives designed to foster both personal and academic growth. One such initiative focuses on cultivating the habit of reading literary-quality works, including fiction, short stories, essays, and poetry. We believe that engagement with literary works strengthens students’ critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and empathy by exposing them to new ideas, complex characters, and diverse perspectives that require thoughtful analysis and interpretation. Such reading also enhances language proficiency and communication skills through rich vocabulary, refined expression, and exemplary writing styles. Collectively, these benefits help shape well-rounded individuals, support academic excellence, and nurture socially responsible citizens. To encourage and sustain this reading habit among our scholarship students, we curate a selected list of literary-quality books in both Tamil and English and distribute them periodically. Students are also encouraged to reflect on their reading by writing about their experiences and learnings. For scholarship students inducted during the last academic year (AY26), the following books were issued: For these reasons, Yaan firmly believes that reading literary-quality books is essential for students’ intellectual growth and holistic personal development, extending far beyond academic learning.