Kochi: Imparting a great lesson in human values, responsibility, civic sense and social awareness, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is roping in students under it for a mass movement to build houses for the homeless across the nation.
The project named ‘Swach Grih’ has been conceived following in the footsteps of the Prime Minister’s ‘Swach Bharat’ campaign and under the campaign students in conjunction with teachers and the managements of 20,000 CBSE schools across the country will build 20,000 houses for the homeless.
Kerala CBSE School Management Association general secretary Ms Indira Rajan has been made national general convener of the project at a meeting held in New Delhi the other day in which conveners of Swach Bharat campaign and representatives of CBSE and the school managements gave shape to the project.
According to Ms Indira Rajan, the Swach Grih project will be launched in New Delhi next month by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar or Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
“The importance of this project is that crores of students across the country will feel like plunging for the same cause since CBSE is a national board and it will become a big constructive co-curricular activity for them as well. Each state will have state conveners for the project and they will co-ordinate the activities in the respective states. The students will raise the funds for the project through different means in association with teachers and managements and CSR funds of companies will also be sought for the project,” said Ms Indira Rajan.
“Already a few schools in Chattisgarh have come forward to build 160 houses. The spokesperson for the project Yogesh Agarwal is from the state. In Kerala one school having 7000 students has informed that they will build four houses. One NRK from Dubai called me the other day to convey his willingness to be part of the project,” Ms Indira Rajan said.
She said that the beneficiaries for the project will be identified in association with the local bodies and the state government. “They would already be having a list of the people without homes and we will source it and identify our beneficiaries,” she said.
Ms Indira Rajan also said that the specialties of the houses in respective regions will be incorporated into the houses to be built in those regions and the geographical peculiarities also will be taken into consideration while constructing them. “Participating in the project will give great confidence to the students and they will feel that they have become part of the nation building process,” she said.
According Fr John Erniakulath, Principal of St Philomena’s Public School, Elanji, Ernakulam, already several schools in the state are undertaking such projects and are introducing innovative ones like rice challenge and lunch challenge to provide rice and lunch to the needy, apart from taking up maintenance and completion works of houses of lesser fortunate ones.
“At the national level it is a great initiative indeed. However, there should be an evaluation scheme for the same for its proper implementation.
The Swach Bharat scheme is lacking in that. A team must be constituted for that at the national or state levels. The team should also publish such findings on the CBSE website along with photos. Then only the community as a whole can have grip of the facts – how many houses have been completed and how much funds have been spent,” said Fr John.
He also said that the media should give enough publicity for the initiative so as to pump great energy into the sinews of the students.
“Those who undertake the works should be honoured at the national level or state level,” said Fr John Erniakulath.
