07 August, 2012

Education, the fishing rod to secure India's future


Welcome back to 'Just Like Us'. In this concluding part, I am happy to present to you, my conversation with Prasad Revuru - An affable software professional with the mind of a scientist, head firmly on his broad shoulders and a heart of gold. Prasad and I got to know each other thanks to an ERP rollout project we were part of, representing different entities.

Arun: Prasad, let us get straight to the achievement of yours that I admire most. The school. What is it called and why did you choose Nellore as the location for the school.

Prasad: As of now we are supporting govt schools and colleges in rural area villages in four mandal in Nellore Dist. We, Visista Grameena, are open to work anywhere in Andhra Pradesh. But due to lack of volunteers in other places we primarily focused in Nellore Dist only.
Now-a-days, even in mandal headquarters, many educational institutions are coming up with fancy names like concepts schools, IIT schools, techno schools, digi schools, international schools and list goes…  All these schools are specially designed for economically well placed people in the society. At the same time the rural area education system is being ignored by all of us. But the students who join in govt. schools are from either backward cast or financially challenged families. And those schools are being gradually ignored by the major communities in the society.
Visista Grameena takes up this point as serious problem and started working with the Schools and communities. We aim to take care of the rural education system through ‘Vishysta Grameena Vidya Samrakshana – VISHY eduCare‘. We are providing an environment that encourages overall growth and development of rural area schools

Arun: What are the various initiatives that your foundation undertake at this point?

Prasad: Active Programs:
Ø  Utukuru ZP High School Adoption
-          Provided additional teachers in the year 2009-10
-          Provided free books, cloths and other stationary
-          Schools outings
-          Awareness programs
-          Financial aid for merits for further studies
Ø  School competitions in four mandals in Nellore Dist
Ø  Important day celebrations like teachers day, Independence day, Mathematics day etc
Ø  Awareness programs like choose your career, ICET, MSc, IT awareness programs
Ø  Financial aid for merits who finished schooling in govt high schools – for intermediate education
Ø  Scholarships for poor and needy students.
Ø  Adopted an orphanage student in 2012  and planning his career

For more details, visit http://vishy.org.in/activities.html

Arun: What all the readers would like to know, how did a school feature in the agenda of a software professional?

Prasad: As I came from a small village, I studied in rural area govt schools and colleges.  I faced lot of problem like lack of awareness in job opportunities, higher educational opportunities, communication skills and so on. Even today students who study in rural area college are not aware of many things. For instance, many India based companies like TCS, CTS, HCL, Wipro, Infy etc… hiring BSc graduates as Software Professionals. How many colleges/students know about this?

Arun: How important do you think education is in a middle class scenario?

Prasad: In Rural Areas, education should be self-supporting, to know the better life, farming, better marketing. They don't know about the govt schemes and programs which are actually planned for them.
For students who want to go for higher education, they should know about the career opportunities and current job market trends. Present education system is not enough in this scenario.
We, Visista Grameena, come forward to show a difference in their lives with our programs and activities.

Prasad, thanks for sharing the activities of your foundation and your thoughts on education.

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