Two Chicago area high school seniors have launched a mission to bring some comfort and joy to children as they tackle medical challenges — in the form of books.

Sanvi Pandey and Sumedha Rao, both seniors at William Fremd High School in Palatine, are the founders of The Bookmark Project — which donates books to hospitals, therapy centers, and other settings where young people might benefit from such an uplift.

They were spurred to start the project by their own sense of isolation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago.

"For me during COVID, I just felt very isolated from like my friends, my family, my school life, and so just firsthand, like, I think, this could go for both of us," said Sumedha. "We both had that like firsthand experience of, you know, that isolated feeling during COVID, and that's what kind of sparked us to start the Bookmark Project."

The website for The Bookmark Project emphasizes that reading and storytelling can "lower stress, boost positive emotions, and even ease pain for children in hospitals."

With the recognition that books are always a source of comfort, the young women started their mission at a very small scale — but one that grew quickly.

"We started donating books from our house, from our families, and we realized that books truly have an impact on people, and since then, it's become a much larger-scale project," said Sanvi. "This year is when it really picked up, and now, we're at about 10,000 books collected."

Sanvi and Sumedha have now teamed up with about 15 sites that are accepting their donations.

"Honestly, we kind of just reach out over the internet. We find their emails or their phone numbers, and we just tell them like, 'Here's what we've been doing.' We've been collecting books from libraries, schools, local bookstores — who have been very generous in providing us donations — and we've just been reaching out and seeing if they are willing to accept donations, and we've been talking about our mission, and many people have been very accepting and willing," said Sanvi.

The Bookmark Project originally had a goal of collecting 10,000 books to donate. The project has now surpassed that goal.

"In the beginning, we thought we would only get maybe a couple hundred books, but you know, we had no idea that we were capable of even getting to 10,000," said Sumedha.

The young women have not been able to read one-on-one with the kids who receive their books, given restrictions on hospital policies. But they have worked personally on delivering the books, and they have even inspired other young people to launch similar missions.

"We think it's very beneficial, and actually, we went into a Montessori," said Sumedha. "We actually spoke with the kids at the Montessori, and we inspired them so much that they decided they wanted to start their own book drive to start their project."

Next year, Sanvi and Sumedha will be going off to college. But they intend to keep their mission going.

"Since obviously in college, we won't be like physically present, we're working on a team so that they're able to physically manage it while we aren't in person," said Sanvi. "But yeah, we definitely want to continue. We're working on collecting more books. This year, we want to collect 20,000 books, and we're also working with some international organizations to deliver books to Africa, India, and just underprivileged neighborhoods."

There is more than one organization called The Bookmark Project. Sanvi and Sumedha's can be reached on the web at MyBookmark.org.

Sanvi and Sumedha's Bookmark Project is not to be confused with a Philadelphia organization that designs bookmarks, or a British organization that auctions bookmarks to raise funds for a school in Zimbabwe, both of which are also called The Bookmark Project and have "bookmark project" in their website addresses.