A class apart

Seventeen sacks of grain for 5,000 people 8212; this chilling fact was enough to make 200 students of the Sahyadri residential school...

Seventeen sacks of grain for 5,000 people 8212; this chilling fact was enough to make 200 students of the Sahyadri residential school, aged between 11 and 14 years, give up their weekly quota of chocolates and biscuits and send the money saved to the Bihar flood victims. And neither the students nor their teachers think that they did anything special. Rather, they say, it was the only thing to do.

Their action followed a report in The Sunday Express on August 31 on the hugely inadequate relief for the flood victims. There was an accompanying photograph of a sea of hands jostling for food at the Jankinagar relief camp in Purnea.

8220;We read the story in The Sunday Express that reported that only 17 sacks of grain could reach 5,000 people who were stranded due to the Kosi floods in Bihar. We were touched seeing the plight of the people in the pictures and thought that we should do something for them,8221; said Karunya Raghunath, who, along with her classmates Ratik Ashokan, Siddarth Shah, Karan Juneja and Tuilka Suresh, spearheaded the campaign.

8220;When the students came to me with the idea of sending money for the Bihar victims, I told them that it would be very easy for them to call up their parents and ask for money, but that would not mean anything. They needed to give something from their own account to understand the joy of giving,8221; said Prabhat Kumar, one of the teachers.

So, the students came up with the idea of forgoing their 8220;tuck8221; money, a weekly allowance of Rs 80 that they get for buying chocolates, biscuits and other eatables from the 8220;tuck shop8221; in the campus. And that is how they collected Rs 9,120, which they sent to the Express Citizen8217;s Relief Fund on September 4.

The collection was raised from students of Class VII to Class X, on a purely voluntary basis. While some students offered their entire 8220;tuck money8221;, others donated Rs 40. By the end of the week, they had raised Rs 9,120.

Sharad Patil, estate manager of Sahyadri School, said that the students had also donated money for the Tsunami victims in December 2004.

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Located 82 km from Pune, the Sahyadri School is a boarding school run by the Krishnamurti Foundation.

The students and school authorities do not feel they have done anything special. 8220;We mould children in this school not to be just career-oriented but to also be sensitive towards the world, and sensible about the happenings in their surroundings,8221; said Patil.

8220;The step taken by us wasn8217;t big. But when all of us contributed Rs 80 it made a big difference. So, if the youth gets sensitised towards such issues we can make a big difference to society,8221; said 14-year-old Tulika Suresh.

School principal Amresh Kumar added that it was mainly the students8217; initiative.