Vidyadaan Sahayyak Mandal,Thane – 5th Anniversary on 15th August 2013.

Starting with 8 students in 2008 , now it is all set to help 115 students. In addition to Thane,Shahapur and surrounding villages it has now spread its wings to Pune,Devgad, Ratnagiri and Chandrapur. In addition to giving financial help to the needy and deserving students , it also conducts various workshops and training programs for them. Each student is allotted one mentor- ‘Palak Karyakarta’ , who keeps in constant contact with the student , and helps and guides him.

The program started at 3.45 in the afternoon. One of the students Miss Chetana Late did excellent compering of the program.

1. Bhau Nanivadekar the founder member of Vidyadaan read the 5th Annual report. He mentioned following salient points:

• Vidyadaan is helping students from 7th std unto engineering level. 
• This year 2 workshops were conducted for volunteers. 
• Two personality development workshops and one career guidance workshop were conducted for students. Sixteen students attended ‘ShramSanskar Shibir’ at Somnath and twenty six students attended a workshop by Mr. Avinash Savji at Badlapur.
• Thirty students of Vidyadaan are working part-time to help in funding their education.
• A bright boy of Vidyadaan named ‘Vrushal Londhe’ received prize money of Rs.2000 for standing first in his college( 3rd year diploma engineering ) , which he donated to Vidyadaan. 

2.   After this a few students of Vidyadaan came up with their stories about their life struggle and help from Vidyadaan .

• Nalini said that with her experience of the dedicated volunteers she is herself inspired to do something for the society.
• Santosh who worked as a child-labourer completed his 10th std. twelve years after he passed 9th std. ,now he is doing B.Sc. with the help of Vidyadaan .
• Kalpana Tarmale was working as a shephard but still she managed to secure 92% marks in 10th std. and now she is doing 3rd year engineering diploma successfully. Initially she did not like reading but now on the insistence of her palak karyakarta she reads at least one book per month.
• Suraj a son of labourer secured 95% in 10th std. had to live on one meal a day but now he is happily doing SYBA and studying for UPSC with Vidyadaan’s help.

3. Mrs. Jayashree Soman –a Palak Karyakarti of Shakila Shiekh shared experiences of volunteers.She said we learn a lot of things while working along with these kids during various workshops. Students are encouraged to speak out their experiences during monthly meeting . Interaction with these children gives us a lot of mental peace and happiness.

4. Next event was Prize distribution ceremony. Children were given books and various prizes for curricular excellence and extra curricular activities.

5. Satyajit Shah ( a volunteer) presented a beautiful poem on Vidyadaan.

6. Five boys and four girls presented a short skit on ‘Time management’ ; one of the students turned volunteer – Karan Pardeshi was the writer and director of the skit.

7. A student turned volunteer Anand Sapate along with Karan and few others had made a short

film on Vidyadaan , which was screened on this occasion. It was a good effort put up with very few resources.

8. Vidyadaan website prepared by Aniket Agate was launched.

9. Finally Mrs. Geeta Shah interviewed the guest of honor Mrs. Renu Dandekar. She used to work as a professor of Marathi at Nanded but had a passion to work in a village. She had decided in 11th std itself that one day she would go to some village for work. So she gave up her job and along with her husband Dr. Raja Dandekar moved to Chikhali village near Pune. Lokmanya Tilak belonged to this village. There she started a school of different kind for village kids. She thinks that education is something which teaches us every minute and makes us able to face the world. Her school undertakes many unique ways of teaching such as – higher emphasis on work experience, doing the experiments in real world, a reading hour in the school during which students go to school library to read books, technical education, student assembly and elections, creating newspaper every fifteen days etc.

She invited everybody to visit her school and expressed her wish to have an ongoing exchange of thoughts and ideas between the two organizations. She has future plans to start a centre of competitive exams in the rural area.

The entire program was extremely motivating for everyone. Many people and organizations have supported Vidyadaan so far, but it still needs a lot more volunteers and donations to take its work to many more students.

Report by : Dhanashree Ketkar