We often speak of students’ need for a proper guidance in choosing the courses they wish to pursue after school. Now some students of BITS Pilani, Hyderabad, have taken this to the next stage by setting up a non-profit company which counsels students not just on possible courses, but also on health related matters and more. SCIO, the company, was born when some students who entered BITS Hyderabad in 2011, got together and discussed the need for such an initiative.
“We were all really struck by how little guidance we personally had, when we were in school, about the many options that lay ahead of us. So we got together and first organised a course counselling meeting, Veda 1.0, for Class X-XII students,” says Sarayu Murali, who is now in the fourth year of a dual degree programme at the institution.
What started as a one-off event went on to become a firm idea and then a company with four directors: Vineeth (Civil Engineering), Satwik (ECE), Vasundhara (MSc Hons, Bio, and Civil Engineering, dual degree) and Nikhita (EEE).
Taking measuresAs part of SCIO, the students have organised such counselling meets (Veda) in various schools for students from Class VIII to Class XII. They have also organised medical camps (Vaidhya). “Counselling Class VIII and IX students is very different from counselling Class X-XII students. The latter have already decided basically what they want to do and only seek clarity within that discipline. The former, on the other hand, are really open and want to learn a lot more about various possibilities. It is not just engineering or medicine, many of them are excited about stuff like finance and accounting and want to learn all about these too,” says Sarayu.
The group arranges seminars where experts from various fields come and talk about their specialisation. One such session was presented by B. Satheesh Reddy, who is in the civil services, and he inspired the audience with a speech that described what all one can do to serve the country, apart from getting a basic undergraduate degree. Similarly, the students had invited Vanitha Batla, an entrepreneur, to talk about entrepreneurship and education for girls.
Roping in corporatesRaising funds from the CSR sections of various companies, the group has engaged many corporate schools in this activity. They have also tried to enter rural schools and help underprivileged students. They find the children there no less enthusiastic and eager, with the block being mainly language. Sarayu recalls, “Their parents are also very supportive and want their children to study more. Only they are not able to themselves help, as they may not have studied English, etc.”
So far, the activities of SCIO have been confined to Hyderabad schools. They are in talks with VIT, Vellore, and MIT, Manipal, to spread the good work there also. For details, visit sciofoundation.com.
