After success in JNVs admission we have another good news to share. 212 of our Seva Kutir children (118 girls and 94 boys have been admitted to Eklavya residential schools. These are free residential schools set up by the Government of India and cater to candidates from ST category. The costs borne by government per resident student at these institutions is Rs 1.10 Lacs annually.
According to our infornation there were about 2500 to 2800 vacant seats in whole of MP for admission into Grade 6 (this excludes a 20 percent sports quota as none of our Seva Kutir candidates had competed in that category.) 189 of our children (104 girls and 85 boys) got admitted into Grade 6.
Also, even though there were very few seats for admission for Grade 9, our 23 children (14 girls and 9 boys) got admitted into Grade 9.
It is noteworthy that girls have outperformed the boys by not an insignificant margin. We have always believed that our Seva Kutirs are also a powerful space for gender equity in areas where female literacy rates are among lowest in India, and early marriages a commonplace phenomenon, besides, of course its patent and exclusive focus on the poorest of poor.
Four of the selected children for Grade 6 have however chosen to join our free Residential Schools in Sehore and Dewas districts.
These numbers could have been even higher but due to some lapse on our part, children from one of our 15 Seva Kutir districts could not apply for this, and in a couple of other districts too we could galvanise very few candidates to appear.
We will surely correct this in future and next year we hope to get at least 300 to 400 of our Kutir children in Eklavya Schools in MP which would be much more than 10 percent of the total seats in the state.
It is to be remembered that our Seva Kutirs are functioning in some of the most far-off and backward tribal areas in Madhya Pradesh. A good number of these villages are such that there is no approach road and one has to walk a considerable distance to reach them – in some cases a few miles.
We hope that these children will have a bright future.
To continue serving the poorest of poor Parivaar nèeds continuous support. To contribute please see https://parivaar.org/donate/
Parivaar@20 : Twenty Years of service in mission-mode
