Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, launching a specially designed scheme named PM-CARES For Children, said that a corpus of Rs 10 lakh will be allocated to children orphaned by the pandemic. In the samr vein, a school in Haryana's Faridabad, Satyug Darshan Vidyalaya, has announced free education for 12 such children, under the aegis of their recent initiative called Ummeed (which translates to hope).
Through this, the school will provide free education to 12 meritorious children between the age group of 6-14 years, who either lost their parents to COVID-19 or are bearing the brunt of loss in family income as a result of the crisis. "We have always believed in providing value education and giving back to society. Given the pandemic situation, we wanted to do something. Due to the adverse effects of the virus on their lives, deserving children might not even get an opportunity to learn or use their potential to the utmost. We have also set a few criteria to choose these children. There will be thousands of children who fall under the category but we cannot accommodate everyone in such a small school. We will also be checking their parents' financial particulars before admitting them to ensure they are from an economically weaker section. This is all being done so that deserving candidates get this opportunity," Neeraj Mohan Puri, who is the Principal of the school, tells us.
The selection of students will be carried out on the basis of mainly three things. "The parents of these children were either working in the media sector or education, or defense services or from healthcare. Children who have ranked in the top 12 in their class until now are eligible, they need to be dedicated and have the zeal to excel. The school will also conduct a scholarship test for these children to ensure a fair process of selection. To qualify, they have to score at least 90 per cent in the test," the principal adds.
Speaking on why they chose to take in children from a specific age group, he adds, "If they come in at the age of 6 they will be with us for a long time until they are 14 and that gives us a lot of time to train these kids, provide value education, enhance their skills and make them competent to face the world going forward."
Parents can visit the school campus to enroll their children, or kids who have lost their parents can come with a guardian or caretaker to avail this opportunity. This initiative is currently for children residing in Faridabad as the school only has a single campus.
