Hyderabad: A group of non-resident Indians (NRIs) from Qatar has formed Vekuva, an organisation to reach out to government schools in Telangana state. Vekuva has adopted schools in rural Telangana and provides the students with notebooks, pens and other stationery.
Vekuva covers over 100 schools comprising over 10,000 students. The group is now organising a programme, Prerna, to inculcate soft and communication skills among students.
Explaining how the initiative started, Raju Kontham, a native of Warangal who is currently working in Qatar, said he used to speak with his friends on how he could do something for his native state, that was formed just over a year ago.
He realised that a lot of his friends were interested in helping out, but were hampered by the lack of a support base to help coordinate the efforts.
A group of three people who formed the Telangana Development Forum (Qatar) soon had 100 NRIs of Telangana as members on their forum.
“We, too, studied in government schools and know what the students lack and will benefit from. We founded Vekuva, a registered organisation, which will reach out to the government schools in rural Telangana,” said Mr Kontham, who works with the Qatar government on their Expressway project.
“For skills training and motivational programme, we have interviewed and short-listed six people who were interested in taking up this work and the expenses will be borne by our organisation,” said Mr Kontham.
The first phase of this project is going on and nearly 200 schools of the Telangana state have been enrolled so far in this project. In the next phase, it will be held in 250 more schools in the state itself, which is set to start from October this year.
“We are also keen on helping unemployed graduates find jobs in India or abroad,” Mr Kontham informed.
He added that “we don’t want the funds to be misused or our efforts misunderstood. We are an apolitical group of people trying to give back to society.”
