How this Warangal student is crowdsourcing textbooks for underprivileged kids and counselling them too
To know the value of an orphanage, ask someone who has experienced one. P Prasanna Vikhil, fondly known as Vikhil Prabha, who was born and brought up in Warangal, studied in an orphanage till class X, after his father passed away. Once he completed his class X, he started working for orphanages. He started looking for Good Samaritans who would sponsor textbooks for children, after exhausting his own pocket money. And then, the 21-year-old started conducting career guidance sessions for class X students. All this was done under the aegis of Friends Being A Helping Hands, the organisation he started to gather forces, funds and do good.
"We have adopted six of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals including Quality Education and Zero Hunger," says Vikhil who is currently pursuing a Psychology degree from Nizam College. Since their inception in 2015, the organisation has conducted over 80 such career guidance classes and has impacted over a lakh students through it. "We try to understand what they want to achieve and explain to them all the possibilities they have in the field," says Vikhil who has been living in Hyderabad for the last two years but is now back in his hometown since the lockdown was enforced. They have their presence in four cities including Warangal, Hyderabad, Guntur and Pune, and have carried out projects in all these cities.
Their latest initiative that has caught our attention is Project Chenchu, where they have adopted Chenchugudem, a hamlet in Nallamala forest, about one and a half month ago. Apart from distributing groceries, they are distributing educational kits to the kids in the area. "These kits contain slates, crayons, drawing books, notebooks, pencils and other stationery. We have distributed over 65 such kits," informs Vikhil. They also provide badam milk or boiled eggs to children to ensure that they receive the nutrition they require. Even birthdays are celebrated with these kids. "Our aim is to build a small school in the area and we have already started raising funds for it," says the youngster.
Apart from all this, this Karmaveer Chakra awardee is a Youth Affairs member of the International Human Rights Organization (IHRO) and helps the organisation conduct human rights sessions in government schools. It's pretty clear to us that this youngster will do all he can to help any one in need.
What are they doing for COVID relief?
- Distributed 15,500 grocery kits to the needy
- Arranged for 30,000 meals
- Distributed 6,000 sanitary napkins
For more on them, check out facebook.com/werisebyliftingothersss
