A bunch of youngsters from Andhra Pradesh are on a mission to eradicate child abuse, atrocities on women and suicidal tendencies among school and college kids in the country and they floated an outfit in Guntur — Woman’s Personality Development (India) in 2014. For the past four years, they have been successfully interacting with seven lakh of students across the country on these issues.
Moved by the Kathua rape incident, a three-member team led by 30-year-old Rayi Venkata Nagarjuna, Founder President, went to Jammu & Kashmir last week to interact with students on the scourge of child abuse. “We met police officials and sought action against the culprits. We visited the place of offence and met the relatives of the rape victim who was brutally raped and murdered by goons.”
Mr. Nagarjuna and his team went to Uttar Pradesh where two child abuse cases were registered at Etawah and Aligarh. “We meet the official and demanded action.” The Guntur-based outfit is using cricketers and celebrities across India to spread their good work.
“I am a cricketer and represented the Andhra T-20 team as captain. Players like Rahul Dravid, M.S.K. Prasad, Vinay Kumar (Karnataka), Srinath Arvind, Iqbal Abdullah and many Ranji Trophy and IPL players are helping us meet more students.”
Mr. Nagarjuna, who has taken up this mission full-time, said the outfit used legendary playback singer S.P. Balasubrahmaniam and movie stars from the Telugu film industry to spread the message.
“The cricketers and celebrities have an aura and it helps us achieve desired results.”
He said from this year onwards the outfit would be concentrating more on schools as it was essential to change the mindset of the boys at the school level towards girls and women.
The tie-up which the outfit has with the Andhra Pradesh Education Department under Minister for Human Resources Development Ganta Srinivasa Rao is working wonders as the 13-member team has been constantly visiting schools and colleges interacting with both boys and girls to enlighten them about physical anatomy and human behaviour.
“We have visited more than 100 schools. We educate them on child birth and the pain a woman undergoes during delivery by pictorial descriptions just to make boys realise that women are not objects. We talk about changes the body undergoes and highlight messages of great people like Mahatma Gandhi.”
