Visakhapatnam: HRD minister Ganta Srinivas Rao on Sunday launched the Sri Sathya Sai Vidya Jyothi, a national project of Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation at Sri Sathya Sai Vidya Vihar school campus here.
The minister said that he routinely attends many functions but this project stood out as it will help millions of children across the country. He congratulated Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation for taking up this unique Vidya Jyothi project, a first of its kind, in India.
Under the programme infrastructure to the select government schools and skills to teachers, and students will be imparted.
Mr Rao spoke on how parents and schools are forgetting human values and giving more importance to only degrees and achievements. “Joint families in the past used to teach children human values at home. The small Jyoti that was lit at the beginning would light up thousands of lives with good education and human values,” he said.
The minister said an order will be issued to the DEOs across the state to cooperate with the SSSVJ volunteers in implementing the project.
Sri Satya Sai Seva Organisation president, of both AP and TS, S.G. Chalam, submitted a formal request to the HRD Minister to allow and enable the Sai Volunteers to visit the chosen government schools to implement the project.
The National Mentor of the project, Y. Srinivas, gave a brief description of the project. The intention of the project is to inspire children to undertake education.
He spoke how lack of proper infrastructure in government schools was influencing dropouts and quoted from statistics that more girls were dropping from class VI as there were no toilets in schools.
Stating that the objective was to undertake this project for the next 18 months, Mr Srinivas requested the minister to pass an office order so that the schools cooperate with the volunteers in the project.
A booklet on the implementation strategy and guidelines of Sri Sathya Sai Vidya Jyothi was also released by the minister.
