Money doesn’t grow on trees but can certainly sprout and nurture many ventures launched for the welfare of the society. Kerala cadre IFS officer Prakriti Srivastava is one person who has been consistently contributing for the education of tribal girls.
It all started in 2015 when Ms Srivastava received ‘RBS Green Warrior’ Award carrying a cash prize of Rs 1.5 lakh for her work towards environment conservation. She decided to utilize this amount for welfare of next generation of tribals.
She donated the entire amount towards starting a scholarship called ‘Srishti’ for tribal girls. She also donated Rs 65000 from her own savings to this corpus. 22 applications were received from tribal girls that year. Of them two students, Haritha V from South Wayanad and Jijitha Rajan from Wayanad Wildlife, were selected after many stages of scrutiny.
BUDDING DOCTORS
They were awarded a scholarship worth Rs 15000 each to support their studies from 2017 onwards. Both are pursuing a MBBS degree now. With the enhanced corpus, more than 60 applications have been received this year. They are being scrutinised at present as per the laid down criterion.
Cut to 2023, Ms Srivastava again donated Rs 6.75 lakh from her own savings and motivated her mother too to contribute to the Srishti Fund. Her mother donated Rs 4 lakhs into state forest funds towards Srishti scholarship. With total fund of 12.90 lakh they includes Rs 2.15 lakh donated in 2017 and Rs 10.75 lakh contributed in 2023 – Kerala forest department will give five more scholarship this year.
Speaking with Indian Masterminds, Principal Chief Conservators of Forests (PCCF) & Special Officer of Rebuild Kerala Development Programme, Ms. Prakriti Srivastava said, “As a DFO I have seen numerous tribal settlements from close quarters. I admire how they live under such hardships and vagaries of nature. I always wanted to do something for them.”
TO COVER ENTIRE INDIA
Now the state government had adopted the programme. Kerala forest department has deposited Ms Srivastava’s contribution in a bank account. The interest generated on this corpus will be used for giving scholarship to tribal girls to support their studies.
Ms Prakriti said, “Whatever I am doing for these tribal girls is much lesser compared to what the society has given me during all these years. So I want to take this to as many girls as possible. I will also try to spread this initiative to the entire country after my retirement.”
