ONGOLE: The educational qualifications listed after a woman’s name are more valuable than her glittering jewellery, says Tati Sarojini, the founder of Tati Indira Memorial Educational Society (TIMES), which has been making great strides in girl child education in Andhra Pradesh.
Beginning her professional journey as a chief technology officer in a US-based corporate company, Saroji along with her husband, Ravindra Babu Poonati, decided to empower women through education around nine years ago.
“We always feel proud about our education which made us what we are now and we respect the fact that education and knowledge are the key tools to flourish anyone anywhere beyond times and distances across the world,” Sarojini expressed.
Ravindra belongs to a humble agricultural background from Ravinuthala village of combined Prakasam district and Sarojini was born and brought up in a well-educated family from Vemuluripadu in Guntur district. With the help of their friends and family, the couple decided to extend a helping hand to enthusiastic and intelligent girls, who were forced to discontinue their studies due to unforeseen financial obstacles.
Recalling the bitter past which motivated Ravindra to extend much-needed support to the girls, he said, “My sister Aparna was energetic and had keen interest to learn new things and never missed a class during her school days. However, my family was not able to afford the expenses of education for two children and my sister had to sacrifice her studies to let me continue my higher studies. Later, she was married off at the age of 13. Not just my sister, there are several other women who had discontinued their studies due to financial hurdles and early marriage.”
Taking such stories as their inspiration and stepping stones, Ravindra and Sarojini established TIMES organisation, which was named after Sarojini’s mother, who had been instrumental in encouraging her to uplift the status of women and girl children from their financial burdens.
The organisation has been funding and providing financial support to girl students belonging to villages of combined Prakasam and Guntur districts such as Ravinuthala, Medikonduru, Nujellapalli, Duddukuru, and Pangulur villages. The TIMES trustees thoroughly scrutinise the applications and carefully select brilliant and poor background female students irrespective of their caste, religion and place. Till now, the organisation has successfully provided financial support to 40 brilliant female students.
Naming a few, Hyndavi, a resident of Aminabad in Guntur district, has completed her graduation in engineering, worked for a few months and with her savings, she went to the US and pursued her Masters. Suchitra, a resident of Daivalaravuru village of Prakasam district, completed her BTech with the financial support form TIMES and secured a position in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), setting an example that women belonging to downtrodden families can also aim high and get successful.
Apart from this, the TIMES organisation also provided more than 220 bathroom facilities for poor people of Yanadi and Banda colonies of Ravinuthala village during the Covid-19 pandemic.
They distributed around 3,000 English grammar books and dictionaries to government school students to help improve their English language skills, including vocabulary and fluency. The organisation has been trying to promote adult education through literacy programmes in the downtrodden localities and appointed tutors to teach them in the evenings at their localities.