About 192 children from villages around Kharagpur in Bengal can claim to be IITians, for they not only study in the Indian Institute of Technology campus there, but even live in the hostel. They are, however, children studying in a school set up by the IIT alumni in 1993. The school, with classes up to std 6, will soon become a higher secondary school if everything goes as planned by the enthusiastic group that is behind this enterprise.
It was first started by IIT-KGP alumni Hansa Nundy, Dilip Nundy and Pradeep Dwivedi in 1993, who decided to set up a school for poor children within the 1,800-acre IIT-KGP campus.
"Kharagpur is still a backward area due to a lack of certain facilities in the region. There are several tribals and poor people living in the area. We decided to educate the women and their children and make them self-sufficient. It's just a way to give back to the society what we have got from it. So, in 1993, we decided to form the Jyothi Development Trust which formalised setting up of Disha Seema Centre School for the tribal and poor children in the region," said Pradeep Dwivedi, permanent trustee of Jyothi Development Trust.
The school came up with donations from several organisations and IIT-KGP's alumni associations, along with Jyotirmoy Nundi who donated 40,000 Canadian dollars in those days.
The school started off with a demographic survey of the region which revealed that 85 per cent of the population in and around the area was illiterate. The youth too had no work.
Disha Seema started teaching women who did not get formal education and then started teaching their children.
"We realised that most of these children don't even take a bath. So apart from formal education, personal hygiene also had to be looked after. So, we decided to make Disha Seema a boarding school," Dwivedi said.
Currently, the school has 192 students all of whom stay in the hostel. The school has seven full-time teachers and about six non-teaching staff. The school has classes from nursery to class VI.
Every year in December, the school invites applications for admission.
"The number of applications we receive is four times the number we can accommodate. We admit students on the basis of lottery which the parents conduct. We never ask the parents their income, but just know that they are tribal or poor people from around Kharagpur," Dwivedi said.
A few of the students come from families that are located 70 km away from where IIT-KGP is situated. About 99 per cent of the students admitted are from tribal families."
The school charges Rs 150 per month per student.
But the school has to spend close to Rs 700 on every child to provide food and lodging.
It costs around Rs 8 lakh per year to keep the initiative running, which is provided by the institute's alumni association. From 1993 till 2008, the school has churned out several students most of whom have become drivers.
A few dropped out, but currently the school enjoys zero drop-out rate due to the facilities provided for every child. From April this year, it will admit 250 students in its school and provide accommodation for all.
Currently the school teaches English, Hindi and Bengali, among other subjects. "The medium of instruction currently is Bengali but we plan to shift it to English for better employment prospects for the students," Dwivedi pointed out.
The Trust plans to start classes up to class X by 2010 and Disha Seema is seeking affiliation from the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education or the CBSE board.
The initiative is also being supported by the current batch of students at Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM), the management institute of IIT-KGP.
About 240 first and second year students of VGSOM formed 'Shraddha' in October 2007, an association of students interested in social sector activities.
These 240 students jointly donated and collected Rs 15,000 to buy t-shirts and colours from the market. These t-shirts were then given to the students of Disha Seema for hand-printing.
"We collected and sold the hand-printed t-shirts at our Spring Festival at the institute and collected Rs 50,000 from the sale. The entire Rs 50,000 was given to Disha Seema as it runs on donations," said a VGSOM student associated with Shraddha.
