PALAKKAD: It is not often that a ‘subject’ from a text book comes alive before students. Save a few television advertisements depicting masters ‘soothing’ the examination nerves of drowsy students.
Students in some schools in the state, though, have walked into that surreal territory. Irfan Alam, having helped transform the lives of rickshaw pullers in Bihar, had been an admirable character after the Kerala Government included his life and work in the Class XII English textbook.
And now, the Patna-based founder of the Samman Foundation and a winner of the World Bank’s Innovation Award, is taking classes for Kerala students on empowerment, motivation and nation building at the invite of various schools.“We’ve decided to take Irfan Alam to various schools in every district in Kerala under the campaign Irfan Ignition,” said Bejoy, a faculty of St Paul’s HSS, Pala. “There will be a series of motivational talks titled ‘In Search of Confidence and Competence’. The government had included his life in the chapter ‘A Three-wheeled Revolution’.
“The chapter was a reproduction of an interview given by Irfan Alam to Sujata Ramprasad in May 2010 that appeared in India Currents. Irfan had won the Innovation Award for empowering the rickshaw pullers of Bihar. In one year, we plan interactions with students of at least 50 schools.”
The statewide inauguration was performed at the Government HSS, Karimba a week ago. The interaction session with the students extended till noon, with questions seemingly inexhaustible. On the nex t day, Irfan was at the Sree Ramakrishna Gurukula Vidya Mandir HSS, Thrissur.
Irfan said, “It was all started by a student of the St Paul’s HSS in Pala. After reading the chapter, he visited my Facebook page and invited me to speak at his school. The management of the school was also eager and they made arrangements f or me to pay a visit in December last year. Subsequently, selected students were taken to Bihar and shown how the lives of rickshaw puller were transformed. It is in this light that I decided to visit Kerala again and work with like-minded organisations.”
He has since returned to Bihar and will be visiting Kerala six more times, each time covering two districts. “In this manner, he proposed to groom 50 selected students into entrepreneurs so as to bring a change in society,” said T Biju, a teacher at the Karimba school.Irfan said youngsters were generally confused and did not know what to take and what to leave.