Though the reality, but still hard to believe for her that she was all set to fly high in the sky of success. Roopa, who lost her mother in childhood, got an appointment letter from Infosys – one of the best IT companies operating internationally. She was in a state of mixed emotions and at this moment this girl from one of the small village in Warangal district of Telangana had no idea that in coming future she is going to be an inspiration for other girls too. Similarly Woollma, a girl from neighbouring Illenda Village, also earned an engineering degree and now well placed at reputed IT company. These are examples of the many ones that indicate the major social transformation in the rural region of Warangal and Mahbubnagar districts, where girl education was of no priority until Vandematram Foundation started working in the region under the supervision of K.Ravindra Rao, an RSS volunteer, and his Colleagues.
Most difficult work for the Foundation workers was to convince the parents to send girls out of the village to study, Madhav Reddy a Svyam Sevak associated over a long period of time with the foundation says that in the initial period, parents were not ready to send their daughters out of the village for higher education. But somehow they succeeded in persuading some people, then a process started to run. Now with the efforts of the Vandematram Foundation, 398 people have done engineering from these educationally backward villages and whereas only 12 percent of the girls could reach the colleges, today this figure has increased a lot. So far total 1600 girls have graduated through the Foundation.
According to the secretary of the institute Bhaskar Reddy, volunteers go to the parents to resolve that unless their girl’s education is complete, they will not marry their girl then after foundation arranged college fees to these girls and the expenses incurred in their commute. A special workshop is organized every quarter, in which accurate and latest information is given to girl students about career options to ensure that the students of the villages also compete with urban children, the Foundation organizes a 45-day camp for high school students once a year in which student experts in different subjects prepare themselves for the examinations.
This initiative of Vandemataram Foundation in the field of girl education is taking the form of a movement rapidly across Telangana. Girls educated from the foundation are making aware other girls about other issues like female feticide, child marriage, women’s health and education, through Sharda Sanskar Kendra run in their respective villages.
Courtesy: Sewagatha
