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| Vijayam, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand |
Her name literally means victory. But when 19-year-old Vijayam first reached Bihar more than 30 years ago, dismal sights awaited her. Small children loitering in the streets without going to the schools, naxal bands terrorizing the countryside etc. were common sights.
After 8 years of being a housewife, she took up the study of B.Ed and became a teacher in a school run by the Kerala Samajam.
At that time social work was made compulsory for school children of Bihar. She put forward a suggestion to the students to adopt a village. They thus set foot in the village of Simun Ganga. Although the villagers at first suspected them to be exploiters in the guise of guides, they were soon able to win the people’s trust. They taught the villagers simple skills to supplement their income from farming.
The small victory in the village prompted her to look elsewhere. Following a survey she put forward a suggestion before the management of the Samajam to start an afternoon batch for street children.
If that was a unique effort, more work was in store. After a girl fainted in the class, the school started offering lunch to the needy students. The World Bank and UNICEF representatives came to visit the pioneering school.
Her next effort was to inculcate environmental concern among students. She took them to barren hills of neighbouring villages for planting fruit-bearing trees. Soon eco-clubs started functioning in all the 7 schools under the Samajam. And it won them Green School award of the Centre for Science and Environment.
These victories did not come easily to her. Many times she had been intimidated by naxal gangs and local political chieftains. “But I never felt fear”, she says.
Perhaps a sense of mission gave her the courage. And that perhaps prompts her to limit her annual visits to her home at Pookkottupady, Aluva to just a couple of days.
Courtesy:
C.M.Biju (text), Gruhalakshmi, August 2009
Contributed by: Administrator
