Keshav Srushti Puraskaar – 15th year of recognising the young people dedicated to Sewa

Every Keshav Srushti Puraskaar programme is like an emotional and spiritual cleansing and revitalising exercise for me. This year’s award was the 15th such award. This award stands out for two reasons. The selection committee comprises eleven women of repute and has no men on the team. It travels all over Maharashtra to shortlist the organisations involved in sewa and does not depend on just feedback of people. Out of these, one is nominated for the award. Second, the award is given to young people between the age group of 25 to 40 years. The rationale behind this is that if a young social worker is gains recognition from a good social service organisation, it gives the promoter and founder of the organisation a big moral boost, and also provides a positive endorsement to the man or the woman and makes the job of resource mobilisation that much easier. It encourages the award winner to work harder despite all the difficulty he or she faces.

Interestingly, out of 15 awards, 4 awards have gone to women, social workers who have worked from greening of the environment to working for physically handicapped or divyang girls. Keshav Srushti selection committee keeps track of the award winners and helps them to whatever extent it can. I find many of the earlier award winners present in subsequent programmes too. It is a wonderful community building exercise, built on trust and affection.
One of the award winners was Sagar Reddy, an orphan who rose successfully in corporate life but realising the horrible condition of his friends after they were sent out of orphanages on completion of 18 years, under present law, he chucked his career and devoted his life to upliftment of his brothers and sisters. He won the award in 2007, and today he is working with Vaibhav Ashok Foundation under the guidance of philanthropist Shri Ashok Goel who has raised a huge facility in Kamshet, near Lonavala, where 900 boys and girls will be housed in best of the facilities to study and dream big with all the expenses and care taken by the foundation. This is the impact these awards have.

This year’s award was given to Shri Aman Sharma whose organisation ‘Teach’ has nurtured the talent of the hearing impaired children who complete high school with great difficulty and find that there is no special facility for them in colleges and they drop out of visibility of the society. Aman decided to raise a college for these specially abled youth to train them to a level where they have 100% placement in high value jobs including in software industry. For this he and his team of volunteers learned sign language to communicate better with their students. Then, they first raised the level of their wards from the low scoring high school levels, solving their problems individually before they finally ended up doing BCom, Art design, Computer programming, or certification courses in various skills of Office automation.
This organisation was established in 2016 and to give his full energy and skills to his new found objective in life, he gave up his high paying corporate job of a software engineer. Today, Teach works from three locations now – Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi. They have developed their own education curriculum and methodology. They also involved the parents of these children. Thus, it was truly a team effort. It is tribute to social commitment to these children that Aman’s wife Kaveri too resigned from her high paying job as a CA in one of the Big 4 MNC consultancies.

Now, all the three centres have long waiting list, as the specially abled children have complete confidence in ‘Teach.’ People are shocked to know that there are around one crore hearing impaired children and adults in Bharat and they need such programmes to make their life more meaningful.

As Aman Sharma put it, the effort is not just educating but empowering these hearing-impaired children. It is an audacious exercise in creatin ability in them to overcome their disability.

The programme highlight was the lecture of the Chief Guest Uday Nirgudkar, a renowned journalist who chose to get into media after a successful career as a management consultant with a PhD in marketing. He informed the audience that the first recognition of Deaf and Dumb or Hearing Impaired people’s problems was during PM Modi’s time in 2015 when he promoted the creation of first Indian sign language for the hearing impaired. Even during Covid, he took special care of these people with special priority care for them. He shared many inspiring stories with the audience and suggested that if you wish to get over the Social Media induced boredom, dedicate at least two hours every week to social causes, work in some sewa project.

He also shared the story of Late Madanmohan Lohia ji who worked hard to promote Marathi literature and drama, though he was not a Marathi. One day P L Deshpande ji asked him, “Why are you putting up with so much of hardship to promote Marathi, it is not even your language?” His simple answer was, “What to do? I cannot help it!” (Kaay karu, rahaawat nahin, mhanoon karto.) This sentence reflects the true spirit of any person involved in Sewa. There is no obligation on her or him. It is just the urge to do something for fellow brethren that makes you go through all the struggle and hardship. Do we feel that urge? If not, we should look within to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of this life?

Just meeting such noble souls and visiting their work can be a life changing experience. Do try to get out of your self-induced boredom with pessimistic view “nothing will change.” Things change, one step at a time. Every life elevated to a better level is a blessing.