Who would have imagined kids who used beg on the streets to sustain life are now studying in Aviation, Medicine and IIITs? Dhasarathan and Dhanraj were child labourers working in brick kilns. Presently, one of them is studying medicine in Crimea State University and the other studying Bachelors of Design course in IIIT Jabalpur. Not only them, but about 50 students from the below poverty line (BPL) category are successfully pursuing higher studies.
Their dreams were made a reality by Dr Uma, MBA, Ph.D and her friends. They started the Suyam Charitable Trust and are currently helping 500+ children to receive a good education.
Anandha Vinayagam, a member of the Suyam family, brought up at Siragu. He joined Hotel Management at Trichy last year and secured first rank in his college. Uma and Muthuram
Twenty years ago, Uma and Muthuram were documenting the lives of street children in India when they came across 3-year-old Jayavel.His mother was an alcoholic. Everyday, he along with his three sisters and a brother, begged on roads for survival.
Uma and Muthuram wanted to help these children who are the future of our country. They established Suyam Charitable Trust to help them and took in Jayavel. He was the first student of Suyam Charitable Trust-established Siragu Montessori School in 2003. Jayavel has finished his schooling and is now at the near-completion of his graduation in aviation in Philippines.
Talking to the The Logical Indian Muthuram said ” We have mortgaged our properties to fund the higher education of our students and also few people have gave us interest free loans.”
Turning Point
Majority of us feel sorry when we see a child beg on the road, and few of us donate money and move on, but a very few of us want to change the lives of those children. At 12, Uma and Mathura started teaching mathematics to children who lived in slums. Apart from this, she used to volunteer at health camps for the elderly, blood donation camps and used to help accident victims.
During her masters, Uma came across Mahalingam who used to work in a factory which makes bronze lamps. While cleaning a compressor, someone accidentally switched it on. Molten bronze gushed out of it and burnt Mahalingam’s face and entered his wind and food pipe. He was admitted to a government hospital, Tirunelveli where the doctors gave primary treatment and sent him away.
Uma came to know about him through one of his journalist friends who got her in touch with Mahalingam in Chennai. She admitted him to the RIGID hospital. Dr JS Raj Kumar, Chairman of RIGID Hospitals in Kilpauk, operated the boy for free. During his stay at the hospital, Uma helped him with his intermediate maths. Later, Mahalingam completed masters in economics, was reunited with his family, got married and is now a happy parent.
She, along with her friends, in 1999 established Suyam Charitable Trust. Initially, the trust accepted only child beggars, but later on, started taking child labourers too.
Creative And Innovative Curriculum
In Suyam school, Siragu, Montessori, innovative education is followed from LKG to the 12th standard.
Icono Write is one of the innovative methods where the children learn to write and remember spellings and concept in a quick and creative way. At Siragu school children are encouraged to learn and voice their opinions and ideas independently.
The “WINDOW LABS” are interactive learning windows of classrooms/labs, developed, designed and created by Suyam and its students. These window allow a touch and feel learning to the students to understand the fundamental theories of science.
Now the school is implementing Theaters into their curriculum. Resource persons from Delhi and volunteers from Ahmedabad are supporting the school to bring “Theatre in Education”.
Theater training in progress Building The School Boundary Wall With Discarded Bottles
Due to lack of funds, the school was unable to rebuild a broken wall. One of the students in the school asked why cannot they build the wall using waste plastic bottles. With Dr Uma’s encouragement and motivation, students built a sample wall with discarded plastic bottles. Later students, parents and volunteers collected discarded plastic bottles from marriage halls and hotels, washed them and filled them with sand and built the boundary wall of 47 feet in Rs.32,000, which previously budgeted at Rs.1,50,000.
“Now nine classroom walls are built using discarded water bottles. There is no electricity provided in the green hall. We are using translucent roofing sheets classrooms lit. Every classroom window grills depict various math and science models.” said Muthuram.
Teacher Training
Uma herself is an educationist and a doctorate awardee who trains teachers regularly on innovative practices to handle the classrooms efficiently. Teachers are taken to various school visits where they learn from seasoned teachers.
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