3rd IPSC Social Service Project

27 October 2014

The Scindia School, Fort, Gwalior (1897) has a long standing commitment towards service to society. In continuance with our obligation towards the less privileged members of our society the 3rd Social Service Project under the aegis of IPSC, was organized at NathonKaPura, the same village, where the Inaugural IPSC Service Project was conducted in October 2012. While the school community continues to maintain its over half a century commitment to the development of the Sonsa village, they adopted NathonkaPura recently. Encouraged by the success at Sonsa, The Scindia School decided to adopt another village. The honour and opportunity of hosting the Inaugural Indian Public Schools Conference (IPSC) Service Project were given to the school. After a thorough survey and analysis from April 2012 the Nathpura (‘Nathon-kaPura’)village was identified for the Inaugural IPSC Service Project in October 2012. The duration of IPSC Social Service Project was from 27th October to 1st November 2014. During this period the delegates did a commendable work in the village. The participating schools were MGD (Jaipur), MNSS (Rai), Scindia KanyaVidyalaya (Gwalior), Doon School (Dehradun), Raj Kumar College (Rajkot), Daly College (Indore) and the host school. The total student participants were 20 girls and 27 boys. 13 teachers were also a part of this project. Three years back the IPSC Social Service Project began at NathonKaPura by building toilet facilities for the women, developing the village school and providing drinking water. The villagers eagerly welcomed the IPSC Team. A marked improvement was noticed in terms of cleanliness and attendance at school over these three years since the first project. This year the target was to construct approximately 90 metres of cobbled path inside the village and to begin a few initiatives to enable the women to get an extra earning into the family. The children and the teacher escorts joined hands and worked with lots of enthusiasm as they picked up bricks and passed the concrete mixture for the construction of the path. Substantial amount of work was done on the first day and both the paths were completed in three days. The students felt highly motivated when the Principal, Mr Samik Ghosh also joined them. On the second and third day the delegates along with the teacher escorts painted the huts and mud walls of many villagers with great enthusiasm apart from constructing the path. The women and young girls were taught the art of Tie & Dye as a source of earning an extra income. Some women were so motivated that they immediately tried their hand in this art and came up with a good result. They commented that this if succeeds will reduce the pressure of collecting dry twigs/wood and selling them for money on them. On the 27th October all the students were divided into three groups. On 30th October Group 1, Sardar Patel Group prepared a 5 minute skit on life and works of Sardar Patel. Group 2, Mahatma Gandhi Group prepared a skit for creating awareness among villagers the importance of cleanliness. Group 3, Lokesh Group prepared a skit on combating superstitions in society. The skit was shown to the villagers and everyone watched the children with a lot of interest. The close observation and understanding of the problems of the village community were evident when the students performed three skits in nukkadnatak style on the final day. The delegates received the IPSC certificates from The Panchayat Secretary, Shri Om Prakash, The Sarpanch, Smt Sheela Bai Baghel, senior citizen of Sonsa Village, MrKhem Singh, Headmaster, Shri Atar Singh and The Principal, Mr Samik Ghosh. The villagers were extremely appreciative of the efforts made by the delegates and their sensitivity. The senior citizens reiterated the fact that hard work is the key to success. The cooperation and contribution of The Scindia School has helped them to achieve a lot of success in just three years. They urged the villagers to give up bad habits and work sincerely for the betterment of the village. The delegates returned with a sense of accomplishment and more importantly, they felt that it was a great learning experience and made them more sensitive towards their less fortunate brethren and instilled in them a feeling of responsibility towards the society. Every evening the delegates returned to The Scindia School tired but contented and talking about the village and the people only to get up in the morning to return to the village with renewed enthusiasm. The entire project is conducted under the able guidance of one of the Deans of The Scindia School, Dr B S Bhakuni. The Scindia School is determined to continue to work at Nathpura and try to address issues such as improvement of the school, regular health checkups, creating awareness about education and hygiene, construction of community hall and imparting vocational training over a period of time. The school is sure to have the support of the member schools of IPSC and Round Square and also of the Scindia Old Boys’ Association.