When the father of a class X student in a Government school here died, the future seemed bleak for the boy as he had nowhere to turn for help to pursue higher education. Moved by his plight, a Good Samaritan wrote to a social service trust urging it to help out the boy.
After getting to know of the plight of the boy, ‘Nizhal Maiyam,’ a trust based in the city, came forward to help him out.
While it was unable to provide huge sums, the trust, headed by B. Murugan, an autorickshaw driver for a hardware store, gave him some financial aid to encourage him to pursue his education.
The only condition, he says, is the beneficiaries must promise to help others after they reach a good position in life.
The trust has also come forward to help another student of a Corporation school here who completed class XII and had lost his mother recently. The family was in a state of penury, with not even enough money to purchase half-a-decent clothes. There were others who scored high marks in the public examinations, but came from families without the economic means to support their higher education.
Besides these students, the trust also wants to help students from 18 orphanages here, for which the trust provides cooked food every week. “We also call up the Government and Corporation schools and try to identify deserving students,” he adds.
These students were among the 2,014 students from Government, Corporation schools and orphanages who received aid from the trust at a function organised here on Sunday.
Financial aid to the tune of Rs. 1.10 lakh was given away to 40 Government and Corporation school students who had completed Class X/Plus Two. A total of 10,070 notebooks were also distributed along with bags, uniforms sets, guides, wheel chairs for differently-abled.
Shabbir Yacoob Imani, Mr Murugan’s employer, and M. Padmabhan, Director, Anna IAS Academy, Bharathiar University, took part in the function along with several other donors and well-wishers. The trust, he says, carries out sapling-planting every week.
The activities of the trust are being carried out by 32 volunteers, who are mostly college students while some are professionals.
