Teen’s sustainable bookstore dream
When Pari Rao, 14, had the idea of starting a buy-and-sell bookstore, it turned out bookselling was in her genes more than she knew.
The year 11 Palmerston North Girls’ High student is raising funds to create a sustainable and communityfocused bookstore in the heart of the city.
Pari Rao said she had an entrepreneurial spirit and when she was struggling to find a job she started to think about what else she could do.
She played piano, guitar and saxophone, so she considered the idea of a music store, but that seemed too expensive.
Instead, she looked to one of her other loves, reading, and came upwith the idea of a second-hand bookstore called Olive Books.
When she told her family of the idea, she found out they had a history of bookselling.
Her mother, Vasudha Rao, had worked for Oxford University Press and said she had dreamed of having a bookstore for a long time.
‘‘It would be my dream thing to have a little bookshop with a coffee corner, but I’m a single parent, so you can’t always do the things that you want too, other things take over.’’
Then, when Pari Rao talked to her grandad about it, she found out he sold books for his dad when he was young.
She was part of a sustainability club at school, and sustainability was one of themain reasons for the idea of selling secondhand books.
She said new books could be dumped by bookstores if they went unsold, and trees had to be cut down tomake new books.
She also wanted to give people an avenue to sell their old, unused books, rather than dumping them.
Vasudha Rao said her daughter was into sustainability in a big way, she thrifted everything, andwas always suggesting getting things second-hand rather than new. ‘‘Once she said it, I was like ‘this is fantastic, this is absolutely what we need to be doing for the future, and who better than youth’.’’
She had started a Give a little page to raise funds, was researching arts and sustainability grants, and had contacted Square Edge Community Arts, as that was where she envisioned the shop being.
She also hoped if it was community funded it would encourage people to come to the shop and be part of it.
Another goal of hers was to get people reading, especially young people.
‘‘If we push reading books in the way we push reading the news and reading articles and descriptions on YouTube, there is still a large market for books.
‘‘Especially in youth because sustainability is coming back as a trend and not just a fad.’’
She said the likes of TikTok, which had 10-second video clips, meant attention spans were shorter today, and she wanted to encourage people to pick up books.
‘‘If we get young people into books as much as they were 50 or 60 years ago, I think that would be good for our community.’’