Trust to fund rural students for quality education

New Delhi, Mar 30 (UNI) As quality education becomes costlier in private and public schools, making it accessible only to the rich, a Delhi-based group has devised a plan to extend financial help to talented students from villages to prepare them for competitive exams in various fields.

Working with an avowed objective--''Fund the students not school buildings''-- the group's ''Gyan Sewa Turst'' has already launched a ''Rural Talent Trust'' in association with Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee, to provide accommodation and coaching from reputed institutes on nominal charges to those who are appearing in interviews for IAS, IPS and other central civil services examinations. The deserving students with poor background will be given scholarships too.

These facilities will be provided to the candidates from villages in Punjab where only 4 per cent students have access to higher education. However, the Sikh candidates from all over India could also avail of these facilites.

Efforts are being made to establish a hostel and a coaching centre for the Sikh candidates and also for economically weaker candidates from rural areas of Punjab. The hostel is expected to be ready by the middle of 2007, said Mr H S Phoolka, senior advocate, Supreme Court and chairman of the Trust here today.

He said initiative was taken by them in view of the dwindling access of students from rural area of Punjab to the university education in the last few years. According to reports, he said, in Punjab's four universities as many as 22,360 students got admission in various university level courses, including engineering and medical classes in 2005-06. Of them, only 911 (only 4.07 per cent) were from villages of the states where students faced severe lack of educational resources available to them.

The candidates who wish to avail this facility may log on to www.gyansewa.com or contact the trust at phone number 9818157332 or contact at Room number 1, Guest House at Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Sahib, Parliament Street, New Delhi.

Gyan Sewa Trust is already running coaching centres in the villages in Punjab since the last one year for preparation of the students for entrance examinations.

The Trust has engaged top most faculty from Delhi, who go to the villages in Punjab over weekends to train the students for such entrance examinations. In addition to the one-year and two-year programmes, the Trust is also running a crash course this year in April at Khadoor Sahib in district Tarn Taran.

The Trust is also running a centre at Nawan Shehar, where students from all the government schools of the district, who could be enrolled for professional courses, assemble at Nawan Shehar every Saturday and Sunday and teachers from Delhi go to teach them over the weekends.

The Trust proposes to start such centers in each district of Punjab shortly, Mr Phoolka said adding that their aim was to provide students from villages an 'equal access to educational resources' at par with their counterparts in the metropolitan cities.

Former diplomat and eminent wirter Patwant Singh and former Union Minister S S Dhindsa are among the prominent personalities associated with the Trust.

UNI