BOMBAY TO BARCELONA LIBRARY CAFÉ

Last Wednesday, Amin Sheikh came to give us a Masterclass about his life and his project, a place to call home, that’s how “library café” was born in Mumbai, to help kids who are living in the streets of this town.

The experience was really emotional because he explained to us all his hard life.

He was born in India, where the culture is very traditional, and that’s why families force children to go to work since they are too young to do it. After being beaten and screamed for little mistakes, and sometimes, for free, Amin decided to run away from home and have his own freedom. However, the problem was when he found himself in absolute misery, eating from the garbage and sleeping on the floor. He couldn’t return home. Fortunately, a few years later began to be a taxi driver. Where he could meet a lot of people who wanted to help him and show him that there is a wonderful world far away to Mumbai. In his birthday he asked his boss to go to Barcelona as a Christmas present, and he gave him what he wanted. After this trip, the Amin mentality changed. He started the project “Mumbai to Barcelona: library café”, and he wrote a book talking about his life and the process to make his project successful.

For me, this masterclass taught me the importance of fighting for a dream. Also, it gave me a vision of how some parts of our world are in a really bad situation, and gives me the strength to go and help people in these conditions. We are so lucky with where we were born and how many things we have in our everyday lives, things that we don’t value enough. This situation has to change, and we have the power to make this possible.

Write by Núria Grau