Zilla Parishad school finds crowd funding as a solution

Mahabubnagar: The management of a government school in Mahabubnagar has found a unique way of funding itself by taking help from residents of the village.

Zilla Parishad High School of Dharmapur Gram Panchayat in Mahabubnagar rural mandal was established in 1949. At present, the school gets funds from the government for school maintenance, to pay scavengers’ salaries, uniform stitching costs, to maintain science labs, library and for internet and so on.

Despite funds coming in, situation is such that the headmaster has to shed money from his pocket for some basic needs of the students. Balu yadav, a Mathematics teacher from the school, inspired by a successfully implemented campaign in another school, decided to follow the same idea in ZPHS Dharmapur as well.

The idea of the campaign is to collect Rs 100 from each household in the village, then keep the fund as fixed deposit in a bank. The interest received from that money would be used to give cash rewards to students who score top percentage in SSC, as well to provide notebooks and to meet needs of orphans or half-orphans studying in schools.

Of the total 500 plus students enrolled in the school, over 100 children are either orphans or half-orphans. “We have collected Rs 100 from 283 households in Dharmapur till now. Some village elders have even contributed Rs 5,000. We are also planning to collect from nearby villages from where children are coming to this school. We have been able to collect Rs 1.30 lakh till now. Our target is Rs 5 lakh,” Balu Yadav told ‘Telangana Today’.

There will be a committee headed by Sarpanch of the village and would have the principal, teachers and nine village elders in the committee to oversee the expenditure. Only after the teachers of the school approve of the proposed withdrawal of money, it will go to village elders for their assent.

Inspired by the idea, J Tirupathamma, a Class VIII student of the school, daughter of migrant labourers, has contributed Rs 100 from her pocket money to fund the campaign. Tirupathama’s parents work in Hyderabad as daily-wage labourers and she is a native of Manikonda which is 20 km away from Dharmapur. She has been living in the BC hostel located next to the school.