KADAPA: When he was desperate to get a job, a few government officials not only guided him in the right direction, but provided him moral and financial support to make him stand on his feet. HV Siva Reddy, who now works in the capacity of director of photography in movies, started a shelter for street children, which took help of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) campaign to emerge as an urban residential hostel that has turned many of its residents into state- and national-level players in karate, wrestling and judo.
Siva’s father Kesava was a truck driver who went bankrupt after conducting the marriages of his two daughters. As a result of the financial difficulties of the family, Siva skipped college after Intermediate in the early 2000s. He, however, took his friends’ help in getting trained in computer hardware troubleshooting, which acted as a blessing in disguise for him.In 2003, Joshi Babu, then deputy collector of Pulivendula, had a problem with his official computer system and wanted to recover some deleted files. This was the time when computers were just getting introduced in offices for regular functioning.
The opportunity to help Joshi Babu fell in Siva’s lap and he successfully retrieved the lost files. Impressed by his skill, Joshi Babu recommended him to then joint collector Jayalakshmi for a job. As Siva lacked a higher education degree, finding a suitable technical job for him was difficult. On Joshi Babu’s advice, Siva pursued a degree course via distance education. After a string of odd jobs, Siva, in 2012, started working in the film industry, and has been involved in several projects since.He, however, never forgot his rough childhood and started a shelter in Siddavatam in 2009. In 2012, then district collector Anil Kumar visited the shelter home and suggested Siva to shift it to Kadapa.
On his suggestion and with the assistance of SSA, he started a shelter home and even provided salaries to the staff there with the SSA funds and a part of his earnings. With the help of one Nagaraju and Ramachandra attached to the Child Welfare Committee, he takes in street-children, orphans and ragpickers. In December 2021, four students from the shelter bagged gold medals at a karate championship held in Hyderabad. Bairesh and Arun Kumar performed well in a Jit Kun Do contest in Delhi. Sangaraju Shivasai of Kadapa town, who lost his father, was brought to the shelter home. He is a class 10 student and recently got selected in an Under-16 hockey team.
Nurturing talents
In December 2021, four students form the shelter bagged gold medals at a Karate championship held in Hyderabad. Bairesh and Arun Kumar performed well in a Jit Kun Do contest in Delhi. Sangaraju Shivasai, another resident, recently got selected in an Under-16 hockey team