VIJAYAWADA: Braving all odds, a 35-year-old psychologist from Vijayawada is on a mission to improve literacy rate among young girls and women, bring out the best in them, and inspire them so that they can follow and live their dreams as well. Meet M Jyothi, who has been reaching out to the poor for over a decade. “I believe that not just quality education, there is an urgent need to help the government school students in realising their talent, be it in sports or any other activity of their interest, for their holistic growth,” says Jyothi, who runs ManoTejas Counselling Centre in the city.
Through Jyothi Charitable Trust, a non-profit she started in February 2018, Jyothi is working on multiple projects—Swetcha, Ayushman Bhava, Aksharam, women empowerment, and Leadership Exploration and Development (LEAD)—to harness skills of students in their fields of interest.
She cultivated the idea of serving the needy in her childhood. Her first major step towards achieving the goal was after she wrote a thesis on ‘shelterless elderly persons’. Being a non-profit, Jyothi Charitable Trust depends on the contributions by philanthropists and her family members.
Explaining what she has been working on at present, the 35-year-old says Project Swetcha (started in October 2018) is aimed at providing free sanitary napkins to girl students. To reach out to more of them, she adopted 10 government schools at Penumaka, Vaddeswaram, Tadepalli, Nutaki, Pedda Vadlapudi, and two in Vizag. Every school where the vending machines, each of which are worth `1.25 lakh, are installed spends `30,000 on an average every month on them.
About Ayushman Bhava, Jyothi says, “Since the time I was a kid, I have wanted to conduct medical camps during Dasara and other festivities, and at slums. Last year, I counselled infectees at Covid care centres in Gudavalli and near Ganguru.”
Aksharam mainly focuses on offering free education to 80 married women and elderly persons at Cherukupalli, Velama Vari Palem in Guntur district during weekends with the help of volunteers. They are taught basic subjects, and languages. Thirty school students use this opportunity to learn their subjects every day for free between 5 and 7 pm.
“We’ve hired four post graduates to teach elderly people and married women between 11 am and 2 pm, by providing them a minimum salary. The project is being replicated in Visakhapatnam with the support of Helping Hearts, an Anakapalle-based NGO. At present, six tuition centres, each of which have 30 class 1 to 10 students enrolled, are functioning and no fee is charged.”
On the project related to women empowerment, she says the Trust offers tailoring, and beautician courses, and an institute was opened at Nathavaram, Narsipatnam with the support of Helping Hearts, where 20 people are studying tailoring. “People over 18 years of age are eligible for the courses. Two more institutes are opening at Velamavaripalem and Sathupalli by this month end.”
The LEAD project is aimed at bringing out the hidden talent in government school students. The project was started in 2019, and many students showed interest in it by participating in inter-school competitions conducted before the pandemic.
“I will continue serving the people. My aim is to establish a children’s home and an old age home where no money will be taken. I have approached district collector A Md Imtiaz to provide us a suitable land in and around Vijayawada for the facilities”, Jyothi adds. To support it through service and donation, the Trust can be contacted at 91608-19907.