Students seek to end poverty through ‘Oru Pidi Nanma’

Kochi: Students in Alappuzha are on a mission to fight poverty through an initiative titled ‘Children for Alleppey-Oru Pidi Nanma’ that was launched by the district administration. Students of each school will adopt a couple of struggling families in their neighbourhood and donate items (food, cereals, groceries, medicines) every month, which they will procure from their homes.Schools are observing the first Monday of each month as community service day and they collect items donated by students and teachers. The collected items will be handed over to respective civic bodies that will donate the same to deserving families.The project began on Monday and collector VR Krishna Teja said that it received a good response as almost 800 schools in the district, including CBSE and ICSE ones, started the programme. Over 3,600 families, who were identified as extremely poor, will benefit from the programme. Teja said it may be the first such project in which students are spearheading a campaign to end poverty.“Government has directed all collectors to do everything possible to fight poverty. After we identified families, we asked the schools to voluntarily come forward and adopt at least a few families and give them essential commodities. Anything, except money and rice, is accepted under the programme. To our surprise almost all schools joined and it will continue each month,” Teja said.In each school, a teacher and student coordinator will coordinate efforts under community service. The programme will be continued even during summer vacation as schools will make the arrangements to collect items from students’ homes.“In our school, we collected items for 24 families. The items include cereals, sanitary goods, packed foods, medicines, vegetables, fruits etc. We sorted them and equally distributed them to each family,” said Shafika Beevi, teacher and coordinator at NRPM HSS, Kayamkulam.