City students take up social work

In the maddening race to achieve our goals, we barely pause to look around. While most of us are busy chasing our dreams and ambitions, there are still a few who take time out for people who cannot make their two ends meet. We are talking about students who are not just into academics but have also taken it upon themselves to help educate children from the city slums.PT finds out more about their activities and plans…
A few engineering students of 2011 batch from Birla Institute of Technology Patna, joined hands to start a small community in 2014. Their primary aim was to raise funds to support education of children with an underprivileged background. Priya Suman, a second-year student, said, “Our small organisation is an initiative that strives to make life better for underprivileged kids. This feeling of satisfaction after teaching these kids cannot be expressed in words.”
The idea was conceived when the founders noticed two very gifted brothers — Ambedkar and Ashishkar — from Aashiyana slums perform well at REVA’14 (Right to Education and Vision for all), an event organised by the college annually.
With an intention to help the brothers and several other kids from Chitkohra, Kumar Harsh, along with his friends, Kumar Shivam, Vikas Ranjan and Kumar Naveen, decided to gather funds for scholarships for these kids. This marked the beginning of a small community called Nav Umeed, which has so far sponsored education of seven underprivileged students. Ashishkar and Ambedkar were enrolled in DAV BSEB in 2014, and are now in Class X and XI respectively. Ambedkar, 17, said, “These college students are like our elder brothers and sisters. They have helped us with our studies and many other problems. I learnt a great lesson here. To be poor is not a bad thing, but to remain uneducated by choice is worse.”
To realise these kids’ IIT dreams, a fundraising event — Raffles — was organised recently. The aim was to gather funds not only from the current batch of students, but also from the former students. The event was a success and they raised about `75,000. Some of these children have now been enrolled at Champ’s Square, Ranchi. Among other students who were sponsored was Nidhi, an eight-year-old
daughter of a rickshaw puller, who was enrolled in
Kendriya Vidyalaya, Bailey Road, in 2017. Rajnandani, studying in Class X, Komal and Kajal, both in Class IX, have also got admissions in government schools.
These students have also organised various health camps and invited donations of warm clothes for the poor in winter. The organisation is currently presided by Shivam Srivastava, who works in Bangalore. He said over telephone, “We connect over WhatsApp and regular telephonic sessions, where we clear doubts, hold discussions, create ideas and thus remain in touch with our members and beneficiaries. We have separate groups for teaching, clearing doubts and meetings.”
It is entirely funded and run by the members and volunteers hailing from the college itself. “I’ve been associated with this community from my second semester and currently I’m in fourth year. I’m a part of this organisation for the past two-and-a-half years and teaching kids is the best experience of my college life. The bond, which we have developed with the kids, is unique and they are like my siblings,” said Aashish Aman, a board member and treasurer, who’s in the fourth-year.
— Alisha Shireen