Much to their surprise, school children of Sepahijala district in Tripura have started receiving invites from no less than the District Magistrate herself to come and meet her in her office. Once they pay her a visit, they not only get to talk to her about any problems they are facing, but they also get a chance to see for themselves how the administration functions and how the department manages a whole district. It is DM Vishwasree B’s love for educating and guiding children that made her take this step.

Ever since she’s joined, the IAS officer has launched various initiatives in the district that would help students especially, like starting community libraries, mentoring vulnerable children under the Diya Bati scheme and introduction of driving classes for college girls. The latest step is just a continuation of her student-friendly approaches. She outlined this initiative in detail in an exclusive conversation with Indian Masterminds.

MOTIVE

Explaining what made her come up with this idea, Ms. Vishwasree B said that during field visits, she realized that children are not aware of the working of the administration and even the location of the DM office. So, she decided to call them to her office so that they can roam around and visit various departments and pick up information from officers that would be relevant for their future goals.

“There are a lot of young officers in our department who belong to the state civil services. We felt once these children meet them and interact with them, they would get motivation to become one themselves. We are targeting students belonging to classes 9 to 12 as this is the main stage where students make career choices. Also, by meeting various officers, they would get role models to look up to and seek guidance.”

FIRST SESSION

The initiative kicked off on Wednesday, 9 February, where around 30 children gathered in the DM office. Ms. Vishwasree said, “We first gave them a brief tour of the whole office where they visited all the departments and saw the working of the administration. After the tour, we all gathered at the conference hall where we had a fun interaction. As most of the children were from tribal communities, we tried to address the various challenges they face in day-to-day life. Some of them came up with issues such as not having proper sanitary facility in schools, need of repairment in government hostels, lack of good road connectivity to their villages, etc.”

It was an enlightening experience for the administration as well as they became aware about the real problems these children face in their lives daily. The administration now got a chance to fix these problems which otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

The DM also asked the students about the career options they are considering, to which she received some interesting replies. Some wanted to become teachers and some wanted to get into the civil services. However, what was apparent was that most of them face difficulties in finding a way to pursue a career study of their choice. Ms. Vishwasree said, “This initiative is solely to guide these children in the right path and make their journey of pursuing a profession easy.”

PASSION FOR EDUCATING CHILDREN

This is not the first time that such an initiative has been taken by Ms. Vishwasree, as three years ago when she was posted as the SDM of Santirbazar Sub-Division in South Tripura, she practiced a similar exercise. As comparatively she had more time to invest in such exercises then, she loved spending time with the school children who used to come over. She said, “I used to spend more than half of my day with those students, during which I used to answer their questions and guide them on various things that would help them in future.”