TIRUVANANTHAPURAM : In the deep reaches of Idukki, in a few tribal colonies, the floods had annihilated almost everything. For the many students living in the colonies, going to school posed a huge challenge, with their notebooks being washed along with the floods. But, Saturday was a day that brought smiles to the faces of the many children in these colonies.
All packed neatly in school bags, they received notebooks and other school supplies, as a group of Good Samaritans from the city gifted them all the required school merchandise.
More than 200 children in the flood-hit areas of Idukki were given school kits by city-based cycling club Indus Cycling Embassy. The study kits were distributed to the students at locations such as ‘56th mile’, Perunkala, and Government GHSS, Kuttoor.
Replete with every school merchandise such as notebooks, pencil, pen, and so forth, the school kits comprised instrument boxes for students studying in classes ranging from 5th to 10th while crayons and other colouring materials were given along with the kits for students up to the fourth standard.
“Earlier we had thought about focussing on Idukki and Wayanad. It was when my friend Sajini informed that there were Dalit colonies where help hadn’t reached up till now that we decided to focus on those areas,” Prakash P Gopinath, managing trustee, Indus Cycling Embassy. “Study materials to the tune of I.5 lakhs were distributed,” he adds.
“It all started when we noticed that no article for school kids was brought forth during the collection drives in the city. So we thought of starting the campaign,” he says. And thus the ‘1 Book 1Pencil’ campaign kicked off on August 12th. The campaign started by the club focused on sourcing school supplies. The members of the Green Army in the city schools spread the word about collecting notebooks.
Each student was asked to donate one notebook and one pencil. The members of Indus Cycling Embassy and their friends pooled in money and donated school supplies.
Collection drive conducted
The collection continued at the organisation’s office till September 7th. The students from schools such as NSS HSS, Palkulangara; Government GHSS, Perrorkada; Model School; Trinity College of Engineering, students of an IAS academy in Pattom, also joined the drive.