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| Vellanad Vocational Higher Secondary School, Thiruvananthapuram |
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There were essentially 3 choices before the teachers of Vellanad Vocational Higher Secondary School, Thiruvananthapuram for implementation of the IT@school programme by installing a computer lab: Ask the PTA to install them, seek assistance from Kudumbasree groups or involve one of the empanelled agents. With most of the parents being small farmers or agrarian labour, PTA could not have raised much money. They were reluctant to bring in a third party, as that would have mortgaged their freedom to schedule computer time
It was then that the teachers themselves decided to mobilize funds. There was no pressure on them except their call of duty to undertake the initiative. V.Rajasekharan Nair, one of the teachers, availed a loan of Rs. 2 lakh from the Service Cooperative Bank at Mundela. 5 other teachers, A.Malini Devi, J.Biju, D.Lalitha, B.S.Geethakumari and S.J.Vijayakumar stood sureties for the loan. The other 80-odd teachers of the school combined to put in Rs.1.33 lakh, small amounts taken as loans from their Provident Funds.
Malini Devi borrowed Rs.50000 from a relative’s fixed deposit and Anilkumar, a computer science graduate and alumnus of the school raised another Rs.25000. With all these inputs the school contracted SoftQuest to install the computer network for Rs.4 lakhs.
“If the teachers had petitioned authorities for the scheme or waited for official clearances, they would have been caught in endless red tape and never made it,” said Kuttappan, a local resident.
Reward was soon on its way for the teachers and they got part of their money back when the school won the Rs.2 lakh award for having the best computer lab in the State in 2003.
To top it, the school has been selected for the State-level 2nd computer literacy excellence award by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The award of Rs.1.5 lakhs would help the teachers to repay most of their loans, said Mohanakumaran Nair, president of the PTA.
Earlier, the teachers had pooled in money for constructing building needed for Higher Secondary School and also for buying a school bus.
Courtesy: Kavitha Sreekumar, The New Indian Express, June 16, 2004
Contributed by: Administrator
