Introduction to the Blog

Dear Friends,

Firstly, a great thanks to Sriram for bringing in together our 1995 batch friends through Whatsapp. I think the number of people joined the Whatsapp group reached 25 by this time and it is really amazing to see such a quick response within just two days of starting the group. It is a great pleasure to know that everybody settled well and leading a happy and comfortable life. 

Secondly, congratulations to Sampath and his wife for being blessed with a new baby girl. I hope Sampath will not bore his child with his accountancy prowess (debits & credits, profit & loss, balance sheet, etc) from the day one :)

And, coming to the point, the main purpose of starting this blog is to consolidate all our serious ideas, plans, activities for the development of our school and to record and monitor our progress at one single platform. 

After our Whatsapp chat on Friday, Anil and I had some initial discussion on our preliminary plans to contribute to the development of our school. We had some discussion on the development of Rajahmundry or in general of our country also. We thought that we should take these plans forward seriously and also bring in everyone in our Whatsapp group to make these plans a success. I assume there are many people with similar interests in our group who can come up with some excellent and innovative ideas for really transforming our school into a "model school" in our state. It is not only about the development of our school itself but it can be anything that you believe that you have a better solution for a critical problem in India. 

Anil also raised an important point during our discussion. A few years back, when Sampath came up with a similar idea, none of us turned up for whatsoever reason. I would like to clarify at this point that the plan is NOT just to raise funds and thus contribute to the school.  We appreciate that some of us may not be able to contribute enough and in fact funding is not a real problem at all. It is more about everyone's participation, generation of ideas, developing relationship with students/teachers, involvement in the group activities and focussing on the vision of the group. There is a lot of talent in everyone of us which can help solve many problems of this country but is really inherent with in us. I have seen many of us have good skills in Mathematics, Politics, Economics, Computers, Arts & crafts, sports, business, teaching, public speaking, presentation, communication and so on. All this knowledge and experience needs to be passed on to the next generation for the betterment of our society.

I think we all should feel proud about ourselves for being among a very few people in India who had proper education, means of livelihood and access to many comforts. On the other hand, we should also feel that we are more blessed or fortunate for being this sect of people while majority of the people in our country still don't have proper food, education, housing or even access to some basic needs. Therefore, it is our moral responsibility to payback to our society for the benefits that we enjoying today better than others. Definitely, it is more a government's responsibility to bring in par everyone in the country to equal status but in such a complex country like India, the duties of the people in a democratic country cannot to be ignored.  

Finally, the idea is that we need to work together to contribute to our community. Let's start with our school (as it has brought us all together) and consolidate all our efforts for the betterment of it initially. If we set a target to develop our school into a "model school" in the state within next 5 years, it will be a great contribution to the society. The plan is ambitious but not unrealistic. For example, I am also contributing to my previous school SKVT from last 5-6 years, We initially started as 5-7 members each contributing Rs. 2000 but it has now grown to more than 500 members and the funds raised to almost Rs. 2-3 lakhs every year. Note that the contribution of funds is coming up from only 10-15 people but every member is participating in the group by visiting the schools, organizing some competitions like quizzes, cricket, badminton, etc which has really made that group successful. We also started a computer room with screen and projector where the students and teachers are directly interacting with us on Google Hangout every month. I personally feel proud that I have contributed for two years engineering education of a brilliant student passed out from SKVT. His mother runs a roadside teashop near City Hospital and his father passed away a couple of years ago. He is a brilliant student since his school days and also secured a top rank in Polytechnic. He is about to complete his BTech in Mechanical Engineering and he is among the top-3 students of their batch now. For more information about our activities at SKVT, do visit the website http://www.skvtalumnitrust.org/ 

Well.. we want to make our school a "model school" but a model school can be anything, a different concept in everyone's mind. Therefore, we should set some common goals (short term and long term) to achieve our target. The first step that I would like to suggest is to arrange a conference call on Skype or Google Hangout so that we make a beginning. Also, please join this group with a G-Mail account as that it provides an integrated platform between E-mails, Blogger, Drive, Google+, Google Hangout, which will be really helpful in our future activities.

Note that I still have further plans to take it forward to the government officials and extend it to some other schools and colleges, if it turns up successful. It is very important that we record all our plans, ideas and activities in this group to take it a step further in future. Therefore, I will be really grateful if you concur with my thoughts and join this group. Let's start this mega event! (don't confuse, it is not going to be like a cinema audio launch event :))

Regards,

Narayana Murthy Ponnada

E-mail: narayana2k15@gmail.com