Facebook post turns boon for tribal students in Aralam, gets 120 lamps

KANNUR: Help them help the needy, they say. The Kannur district administration followed this dictum and helped several good Samaritans to help tribal students in the remote tribal inside Aralam farm study better. And at the end of it, the students have got solar lanterns to escape from erratic power supply, the good minds an easy way to extend their helping help to the deserving ones and the district administration the satisfaction of pioneering a novel way to getting things done.

The project took off when the Kannur district administration realised that the frequent power failures affected the studies of the tribal students in the remote Aralam farm high school. District collector Mir Mohammed Ali then posted an appeal on his official Facebook page two months ago requesting people’s help in getting solar lanterns for the 104 students in 9th and 10th standards. And the response was tremendous: the district administration so far received over 120. “We had given the link of an online shopping site where solar lanterns were available, and that seems to have worked,” Mr Ali told DC.

“People were able to order with a mouse click and enter the district collector’s address as delivery point. This made things easy for many who wanted to contribute,” he said. Apart from individuals, groups like students from Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, and a school from Oman also contributed. And the donors are from abroad.  “Since we have more than what is required for the 9th and 10 standard students, we can now start giving them to the 8th standard students,” he added. Aralam Farm is one of the largest tribal settlements in Asia spread over 7,558 acres of which 4059 acres had been given to the tribals for settlement via Tribal Resettlement Development Mission (TRDM). It has a tribal population of 1,618.