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Many people plan their retirement around travel, rest and family. Ravi Karve of Thane, a swayamsevak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, added another goal: giving back. For the past ten years he and four colleagues have helped students from remote villages and city slums. They also try to teach those students the value of giving back, so that the help passes on.
What Vidyarthi Vikas Yojana does
Between 2010 and 2022, Ravi ji and his team raised about Rs 10.95 crore under the Vidyarthi Vikas Yojana. The money pays fees for professional courses such as engineering and medicine, and has also helped rebuild six dilapidated schools in Thane and Raigad districts. The team finds talented students who cannot afford fees and links them with well-off families willing to support them, so that a lack of money never clips a deserving student's wings. Swayamsevak Arun Karmarji, who has worked on the initiative since it began, says the first five students were identified in 2010.
Two students who made it
Swati Singh. Her home in a Ghatkopar slum was once surrounded by water for three months, yet she kept studying. After her HSC she completed a B.Sc and an M.Sc, and she now has a bank job with a package of 19 lakh a year.
Anjali Lokhande. From Solapur, Anjali used to keep her medals in a bamboo container in her small house. Today she is a mechanical engineer with honours, based in Nagpur and working at Infocepts Technologies. She has helped her family out of poverty and fulfilled her mother's dream, after a donor agreed to pay her fees.
The programme shows how one generous decision, made by one person, can change a family's future.
This story is adapted from the Parivartan Yatra series on Sewagatha. Read the original: sewagatha.org.