Already the hundred percent literate district of Kerala, Alappuzha or Alleppey, has again created history – by becoming totally poverty free. In a novel idea the District Collector, V R Krishna Teja, launched a ‘Children for Alleppey’ programme in which students have adopted the poor families voluntary.
A batch of 100 students is being selected to cater a single economically disadvantaged family, hence covering all the 3613 such families in the district.
IDENTIFYING
The new government after coming to power in 2021, in its first cabinet resolution decided to eradicate poverty from Kerala. Aligning with the thought, the current DC initiated the ‘Children for Alleppey’ programme. He was helped by a Government survey which recently identified 3,613 economically poor families in Alappuzha.
“There are 800 schools in the district and we thought of linking them with this initiative. We requested these schools to adopt some of these poor families. Initially I thought a few hundred schools would come up to help but during the course of time all the schools came forward to do community service,” said Mr Krishna Teja.
COLLECTION
The district panchayat, MLAs and ministers from the district collaborated to announce the first Monday of every month as ‘community service day’ in schools.
Mr. Krishna Teja told Indian Masterminds, “Children can contribute whatever item they wish except rice and money. They are doing it voluntarily and there is no compulsion. All items like sugar, toothpaste, soap, millets, etc. are collected in one box from every school.”
The officer also informed that each school has earmarked a teacher as Community Service Coordinator. The students have also formed a community service club in each school. These children segregate all the donated material within an hour or two. In the evening the members of the poor families come and collect it from the respective schools.
“Through this initiative we are targeting two things, one we need children to understand the importance of sharing and caring and we are also helping the people in need,” he said.
As this initiative has helped to eradicate poverty in the district temporarily, more steps are being taken by the district administration to have a permanent solution. The panchayats and municipalities are coming up with different kinds of ideas where these people can be benefitted in many ways.
