Sowbhagya Educational Trust

Seeing a poor family - don't feed them but teach them to fish. Of course, I should have written don't just feed them, these families that I am going to talk about, have income generators as their head of family, but only thing is that their income is not even sufficient to take of their family. When such is the situation, how can they think of educating their children so that at least their children will be out of the ' poverty line'. Sowbhagya (means life filled with all good things) educational trust is doing a Yeomen service to these kind of people in their residential area.

Sowbhaya trust which celebrated its 16th annual day recently had invited me to their function as a chief guest and I had the honor and privilege of distributing educational aid to these children. It was such a sight to see and behold. From the way the trust works under the Founding Trustee, Jayalakshmi Rajagopal, it goes about in with a great strategy that at the end of the day the children finish the college education be it professional degree like " BE or Graduation in their chosen field. It has presently 60 children under its care.

To talk in great length about the game plan of this Trust will make the readers understand what I meant by their Strategic intent.

The trust picks up the top ranking kids in their 5th standard, administers a written test and whoever passes out takes them out of the government run Corporation School and puts them through the entrance test of the Private school in the nearby locality. Those of children who upon passing out successful in the School's entrance exam and are admitted into this school come under the care of the Trust. The trust not only takes care of their school fees, but also provides them will all required educational aids right from Pen, pencil, Geometry box to their books and school uniform. Mind you, all these children are from the very poor family where their father and mother may be employed as drivers or gardeners or carpenters or house maids. These children may even be the first generation to go to the school. The trust has a project coordinator and other teachers who take care of the children's' off the school needs and helps them with special tuition class in English, maths, science etc. There is even a special prize for the ' attendance' for these tuition classes. Thus the children are made to achieve educational excellence and turn out to be school toppers. I saw the Public pass out marks of these children - 2 of them have scored 99/100. A very great achievement indeed for even children from normal homes, but something superb for these children. When the school pass outs secure admission for the college, they continue to be taken care of by the Trust. Of course, the Trust has been financially supported by Asha Foundation USA. So credit goes to both of them. But more so for those trustees for the 'care, love and affection' they have for these children. The current trustees are Jayalaksmi Rajagopal (Founder and without whom the Trust would not be what it is), Sowdamini chandrasekhar Secretary (a self employed veteran who has the interest to learn and do work at a very mature age), Maya Mohan (head of operations at Ajuba, a 2500 member company - you can understand the kind of work pressure amongst which she is undertaking this work) the Treasurer, and the other trustees like Sarojini Varadhappan, Sreepathy, Uma Kittappa, Chitra Subramanyam, Shanti Ramkumar, Dr Aparajithan, who are ably supported by people like Rajagopal, Kittappa, Mohan, Chandrasekhar, Krishnan Kutty apart from the other members of the Residential Association which provides the Trust with all out support for their activities.

All of you deserve all out appreciation for your dedicated work with the children to succeed in their life. May you all continue this good work.

My only prayer to God is that some time in the near future I should be a ' special invitee' to their Annual function, where one of these children is the Chief Guest on account of his or her Career Achievement. May that day come soon.