Dear Srinivasan,
An eye-opening report on Periaswamy and his work. I appreciate the effort you have put in popularise this movement. I will be passing this on to several of my friends through copy of your email report. i hope something positive comes out of it.
Desikan
On 01/06/2008, Prime Point Srinivasan <prpoint@gmail.com > wrote:
From ModeratorDear friendsOn the last Gandhi Jayanthi day ( 2nd Oct 2007), we had featured Mr Periaswamy, an extremist turned social worker as a podcast titled "Violence to Non violence" in the follwoing linkRight from his childhood, Periaswamy had urge in him to help the downtrodden and to remove social evils. Unfortunatley, during his student days, he was misled and entered into naxalite and extremist movement. He spent his early days as an extremist and was sentenced to death. He was in the prison for more than 5 years.During this prison days, after getting the death sentence, he was going through various books and realised that violence and extremism were not solution for uplifting the downtrodden. Fortunately for him, he was exonerated by the High Court and released from the prison. Though for some time, he was in the political movement to serve the poor people, he realised that politics was also not conducive in his mission.Three years back, he wanted to provide education support to the dalit children in the evening in the near villages. Some of the local teachers gave him support. Due to his leadership in those area, he was able to convince the parents to send their children to the evening coaching centre. He started such coaching centres in a few villages experimentally. They used to sit in public places or under the street light and conduct classes. There was a good response from the parents and children. The support was provided free of cost.Periaswamy discussed his project with Mr Sudarshan, CEO of Zylog Systems Ltd, (an IT Company). Sudarshan is a NRI. He also joined the trust as one of the trustees and started providing financial support to start few more such centres. (now Sudarshan has joined our group and he has a flair for helping downtrodden children)Presently, Nandanar Trust is running 60 such evening coaching centres in 60 villages from 6.30 PM to 9 PM every day. One teacher is handling the centre. Around 50 to 60 dalit children attend every coaching centres. They supplement what the regular schools teach. They handle from 1st standard to 10th standard. In the coaching centre, they practise Yoga, Meditation, etc. More than 3000 downtrodden children are getting the benefit from these 60 centres. Besides, the trust is also running tailoring classes for the women, free of cost. This has helped the dalit women to learn tailoring and then use this skills for earning money.Trust engages 60 teachers for all their centres and 6 supervisors to coordinate between the centres. Now, the activity has completed two years successfully and enters third year.Last Sunday, they had organised a training programme at Ulundurpet (Tamilnadu) at Sri Sarada Ashram. 45 teachers and all the supervisors participated in the three day training camp. The faculty members of B.Ed College run by Sarada Ashram helped them to conduct workshop.Since Nandanar Trust is also one of the partner organisations of our India Vision Group, I personally went to the training camp, along with Mr Sudarshan. We had an interaction with the teachers.They told us that all the children have started doing yoga and meditation regularly. Not only that, they also have influenced their parents (who are mostly illeterates) positively. The teachers teach them values and ethics in the evening classes. These children every day after getting up from the bed, fall at the feet of their parents and take blessings (a new experience for the parents). More than anything, these children are engaged in good activity and they do not watch the trash TV programmes in this peak hour. The teachers say that this has helped the children to pick up studies and earn good marks.In some of the villages, normally, all the children, writing 10th std. board exam used to fail. Now, in this two years, this is reversed. More than 90% of the children pass the board examination and even get school ranks.Periaswamy says that to run one such coaching centre to help around 50 to 60 children cost them only Rs.1000/- per month towards the salary for the teachers and supervisors. Now they do not have any website or email. They plan to start a website soon and to post their accounts through the website and to solicit the support from Corporates / individuals.It is a great thing that 1000/- rupees /month can change the life of around 40 to 60 dalit children in a village. If anybody interested to get associated, you can send a mail to me. I will connect with them.Please see the photo stream of training programme in the following linkWhen I left the training camp, Periaswamy told me, " Sir... What I wanted to achieve through violence and extremism in those days, now i am achieving silenly with the support of all people and creating happy enviornment"K. SrinivasanModerator94440 50273
Please visit the website http://www.indiavision2020.org to read inspiring articles of eminent personalities
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