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Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B’luru

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Bengaluru: On one hand we have teenagers who are busy fiddling with their phones and then there are some teens who stand up to issues and try to make a difference.

Tanvi Roy, a 17-year-old PCMB student of National Public School (NPS) HSR in Bengaluru is a budding social worker who falls in the scond category. This inspiring young girl, along with other 32 students from her school, raised Rs nine lakh to help build a creche in Iblur, near Sun City Apartments.

When one thinks of volunteer work, one usually pictures environmental activists cleaning up the streets or health initiatives or some other mainstream stuff. Making creshes for the labour class is so out of the norm that not many are aware that this is a serious issue.

Many daily wage workers and maids have difficulties going to work as they cannot leave their children unattended. They end up taking their children to their workplace, which can be very hazardous for the children especially if their parents are working at construction sites or other such perilous locations. The women also cannot always leave their children at home alone with their husband as in many cases, they are raging alcoholics.

This is where creches come in to save the day. Creches are basically like day care centres, where the parents drop off their children before they go to work and pick them up in the evenings before they head back home. At a creche, the children are given basic education and food.

At present, there is an NGO called Navajeevan Mahila Pragati Kendra that runs creches in Bengaluru. So far, they have set up seven creches across Bengaluru after studying the demographics of the locality. At these establishments the children are provided with some basic education, play time, healthy meals and even vaccinations and medical necessities. Care is given for their holistic development. The money that was raised by the students was for the eighth such facility.

Tanvi Roy, as part of her work with the Rotary Bangalore Lakeside (RBL) club, took the initiative to help build the creche in Iblur from raising the money to painting it. The students, all 11th and 12th graders from NPS HSR, raised a total of Rs 9,08,375 for the cause, which was given to the Rotary club. The money was raised by the students over a period of 21 days from April 6 to 27, on a crowdfunding platform called Fuel a Dream and will fund this creche for the next two years.

The other students, who were involved in the fund raising, are Ila Manish, Sneha Karthik Rao, Divyaansh Dulles, Leena, Dhruti D B, Siddhant Gupta, Swathi Aravind, Anjali Mallena, Simona Bhagat, Deepta Jairaj, Abhinav Roy, Ananya Uppal, Sayoojya Prasad, Keerthana Ambat, Tarani Jindal, Sanjana Gandhi, Aayushi Jain, Shivani Sankar, Aryan Ajit Kurup, Nethra Natarajan, Kasturi Kailas Katale, Rishabh Keste, Ankitaa Nagaraj, Aayush Varma, Aditi Attada, Vishal Venkatesh, Arpita Chugh, Bhargav Kulkarni, Eehit Ray, Manasvi Dhankani, Aditi Raghuram and Arjun Sai Sinha. Of the 33 students, five were unable to complete their fund raising campaign as they had other commitments and hence had to discontinue their efforts. Their campaign was however, left active on the Fuel a Dream page.

Tanvi told NewsKarnataka that the cost for running this particular creche would come up to Rs 45,000 per month and so the amount that was raised will keep the creche running for the next two years. She also said that she plans to keep helping the creche.

Another student who was involed in the fundraising campaign, Simona Bhagat told NewsKarnataka, “As a group we had decided to raise enough money to fund them (the creche) for a year which is about Rs 7 lakhs but, we raised Rs 9 lakhs.”

When asked how she drove her part of the fund raising campaign she said that she spoke to her friends, relatives and people she knew about the cause and asked them to donate money on the online platform (Fuel a Dream). “Each one of us had our own web page and the people would donate onto that and since this campaign was in association with the Rotary club in Bellandur, the money would go to them and they would implement the work that was needed to be done for the creche. It was a constant effort on our part to ask people to donate to the cause. The cause also spread by word of mouth as people we approached for donations told other people as well,” she said.

The other people who helped with the cause were Ranganath Thota (CEO of Fuel a Dream) and Rotarians Tee Vee Srinivasan (who donated Rs 75,000) and Jayanta Tewari. The Rotary Club of Delden Borne, Netherlands has also offered to fund the creche.

To help give the creche a finished look, Tanvi and her schoolmates got the entire locality of Bellandur involved, bringing in around 50 people to help paint the new creche. People of all ages showed up to lend a hand.

Lots of people came to paint the new creche. Schoolmates who were part of the Fuel a Dream campaign, the RBL club adults, The Sun City Interact Club, Konsult Art Academy and many other people from the vicinity.

When asked how she was able to rally people to help with the painting of the creche, Tanvi said, “We send messages using WhatsApp. We also went to the neighbouring apartment buildings and informed the residents about the creche. We even called artists from the we called the Konsult Art Academy to come and help us paint the creche. I think this is a beautiful story of how a community can come together to do some good.”

The entire construction work for the new creche took about two weeks to complete.

Jayanta Tewari, a Rotarian told NewsKarnataka that if the students had not pitched in to help raise the necessary funds, the creche would have taken longer to materialise.

He added that the creche would be inaugurated on May 26 at 11 am where the members of the Navajeevan Mahila Pragati Kendra NGO, some of the children that the NGO has identified and their parents will be present. The children will start coming to the creche officially from Monday onwards, he added. Elaborating about the creche he said, “The NGO has identified around 35 to 40 children who will be cared for at the creche. This number can fluctuate since some children may not like to come to stay in the creche… it will be similar to going to the school for the first time.

 

Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B'luru
Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B'luru
Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B'luru
Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B'luru
Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B'luru
Budding teenage social worker helps raise Rs 9 lakhs for creche in B'luru

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Andrea Noronha

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