Here is alumni association that helps students from other schools, the under-privileged in particular. Inspired by one of their teachers at their annual reunion, students of the first batch, 1980-81, of Shrine Vailankanni School in T Nagar came together to form SVSS Alumni Charitable Trust.
“Our classmates arrived at a consensus that we will help others as our school was well off, and we started to channel our effort towards this,” says Sabitha Krishnamurthy, an old student and managing trustee of the registered charitable trust.
Getting financial support has not been much of a challenge as the reunion meets used to draw a good number of batchmates. The Trust invited old students from other batches too.
“We used to collect money towards the reunion meet that is usually held during the Marghazi season and also at the day of the meet,” says Sabitha.
The money that remains after the conduct of the meet and funds received through contribution were given to the cause of promoting ‘education for all’, disability rights and also towards old age care.
Since the last six years, the focus has been on education. The core team members of the Trust help verify the credentials of deserving students before sanctioning them a scholarship amount.
“We would personally knock at schools to see if there are any fee defaulters and do a background verification before awarding them a scholarship,” says Sabitha. Students with single parent qualify for the assistance.
Pandemic did slow down the activities of the Trust (the members have not held a reunion for the last two years) but they are hoping to resume meet-ups this year.
“Pre-pandemic, we had 80-90 students availing our scholarship. Now, the number has reduced considerably,” she says.
VS Rangarajan, also an old student, says students from five to six batches are currently members of the Trust and they want alumni to join them to strengthen the activities.
