On June 12, 2009, I'd travelled to Kasuva, a little village near Chennai, to conduct a training programme for teachers at a school run by Sevalaya. This place is an hour’s journey from Chennai Central by a local train.
I had heard of ‘Sevalaya’ Murali from a few friends – that for the last 25 years he'd worked in TCS and spent every weekend at Sevalaya and that he had recently quit TCS to devote all his time to the cause. Of course, now I know that Sevalaya is regularly in the news for some achievement or the other.
We were received by a young teacher, Jayakumar, and taken to the campus – and to say that what we saw and experienced for the next three days was humbling, would be but an understatement.
I discovered that the campus was living and breathing the philosophy of Bharathi (Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharathi), Mahatma Gandhi, and Swami Vivekananda (BGV), and it was not just Murali - his entire family was completely involved in the project for the past 22 years. When I read about him in India Today (27th July, 2009 Game Changers – people who made a difference in education), I realised that he must have been barely out of college when he started this. So what made him think of social service at an age that normally licenses you to dream of a materially rewarding life?
Coincidence?
In Murali’s own words -
“When I was a school boy of 11 years, I happened to borrow Bharathi’s poems from a classmate’s father. He was very reluctant to part with the book, as books lent to others rarely come back, but I promised to return the book within a day. I borrowed it because I thought I could finish it the next day, which was a school holiday. But when I reached home, I remembered that the holiday was because it was ‘Saraswathi pooja’. The next day, as per custom, my grandfather wanted all my books to be kept in the pooja room, and he even forbade me from any reading for that day. Somehow, I managed to hide this one book from my grandfather, giving him all my school books.
I started reading the book while my grandfather began his pooja. The book was more than 400 pages long, filled with poetry - and I was just an 11-year-old boy. I realised that there was no way I could finish the book, cover to cover, by the end of the day, and hence decided to read it at random. So I opened a page and started reading. The page was right in the middle of a poem, and surprisingly, it was about Saraswathi pooja. It described exactly what my grand father was doing, and went on to say that that was NOT the way to do a Saraswathi pooja - murmuring a few ‘mantras’, stacking up books, and offering sandal and flowers. Bharathi's command to the reader was for him to find a town where there was no school and burn it down. What Bharathi actually meant that you should strive to start schools where there are none?
Bharathi was also very categorical in mentioning that these schools were to be run free, for the benefit of the poor. This, then, would be a real Sarawathi pooja.
The poem had a lasting impression on my mind, and I decided to perform the Saraswathi pooja the Bharathi way. This was the first seed of Sevalaya.”
BGV
Moving on from Bharathi's philosophy was what Vivekananda once said - that if someone is hungry, then food is the God for him. Mahatma Gandhi said, “India lives in its villages and if we can improve the plight of a village that is real service.” The common thread in the philosophy of all these three great men is ‘Serve the needy’.
Inspired by strong thoughts of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi & Mahakavi Bharathi, Sevalaya was founded by five young people, including Murali, and started functioning on May 29, 1988, with five children in a small rented house at Sivanvoil village. Classes began to be taught formally in a school, from 1991. And despite its humble beginnings, the school has been maintaining a pass percentage of close to 100% in the X and the XII board exams, for the last few years now. While this may seem ordinary for many, one needs to know that these are first generation learners that the school is dealing with - students here come from families that cannot read or write.
A journey of 20 years
Many social organisations find it hard to keep up the drive and the finances for more than a few years. But Sevalaya is clearly here to stay. Twenty-two years ago, when Sevalaya entered Kasuva village, there was no school. None of the poor children there were going to school, and they and their parents were happy to work in agricultural fields and brick kilns for meager wages. Today, the institution teaches 1,050 children for free, and 100 of Sevalaya’s products are in colleges, fully supported by Sevalaya. Some children have completed their higher education, and have gone on to become software engineers and bank officers.
Sevalaya also runs an orphanage, an old age home, a goshala, a small medical center, a craft education center, a library, and various other programmes and seminars for the benefit of youth and women from villages. Vinobhaji Goshala serves the twin purposes of providing quality milk to inmates of the Sevalaya campus,as well as to the rest of the village - thus having taken the first step towards self-sufficiency. The goshala also protects cows from being sent to slaughter houses.
The services and philosophy of Sevalaya extend beyond the campus and the village. The institute has completed a 30-part course on BGV Philosophy in Coimbatore Prison; and seminars on themes like Prohibition, Basic Education, and Communal Harmony are conducted regularly.
"I would not have, even in dreams, thought that my son will one day become a software engineer and get employment in a big firm. I was just a small peanut seller in Thiruninravur station. Sevalaya is solely responsible for this level of growth for my son," says Illayaraja’s mother. IIayaraja, is a product of Sevalaya, now works for TCS, and is also a Trustee in Sevalaya.
Murali measures his achievement not by the laurels or the funds he receives or what his students achieved. “When Sevalaya started, we had to go from hut to hut and spend a lot of time with the villagers, trying to impress upon them why they should send their children to school. Today, if we have 50 seats for children in a year, we get 500 applications. Most of these people are from among the poorest of the poor, and they come to us because they have seen how Sevalaya has helped children get free education, and more importantly, how lives have changed for those kids. This is Sevalaya's achievement - the awareness of what education can do for an entire generation.”
In nearly 15 villages near Sevalaya, there is no child labour now, as all the children there are in Sevalaya’s school. The consumption of alcohol has come down due to our consistent campaign, and the use of hazardous industrial waste oil in the nearby brick kilns has completely stopped too. As there are nearly 10 colleges from the city, who conduct their 10-day NSS camps every year, there are always nearly 50 to 60 youth engaged in community service, which ensures that there is always some volunteerism in the air. In fact, we have attracted even an American university to conduct their camp in Kasuva village, and several students from many parts of the world are always parked at Sevalaya, busy with different kinds of activities."
Passing on the passion
Catching hold of committed manpower is a challenge. As an institution grows, it becomes impossible for the founder to take direct care of all activities. Work has to be entrusted to staff members, who sometimes do not act with the same level of passion as that of the founder. "Passing on the passion" is the bigger challenge in any such endeavour. Growth also brings darker clouds like jealousy and defamation. Unproductive time spent on countering negative activities like these is also a challenge. And needless to say, funds are a challenge for any such institution, and as we get more money, we expand our activities to include more beneficiaries, thus chasing further for more funds.
Sevalaya University in sight?
When Sevalaya was an elementary school, students would drop out after the fifth grade. We then upgraded to high school, so that free education was available for kids till Class X. Students started dropping out after Class X. This led to upgrading to higher secondary school, so students could start getting free education up to Class XII. We also started funding bright students to take up college education. Now, there are 100 students in colleges, who are funded by Sevalaya, and 20 of them are in engineering colleges. The number is set to go up every year. The kind of money we need to spend on higher education is also increasing every year. It will probably be cost-effective to run our own university! And we could also make our education more rural-based, and at the same time job-oriented. So that is our plan then – to run a free university, open only to poor, destitute and orphaned children.
On Sevalaya's website you find this text - Sevalaya means Temple of Service. Swami Vivekananda calls the poor man as Dharithranarayana. Service done to poor and destitute is actually the prayers offered to the God. Bharathi also says that he who can't bear the sufferings of others, is a Punniyamurthy (blessed soul). As service activities are going on to such Dharithranarayanas, the place is named as Sevalaya. Wish there are more Sevalayas?
I have gone to Sevalaya again this June to share more ideas on teaching-learning. The teachers had been using some tips that I had given, like Jigsaw method for team learning. This year, I discussed Graphic Organisers and ideas from newspapers and a magazine named Teacher Plus.
I received the following feedback from Murali, recently:
I spoke to all the teachers and also saw some of the classes where they are implementing the learnings. It is very interesting and the "newspaper" method of teaching is a big hit.
On the whole, the training was enjoyable as you have used many of the methods in your class itself. So it became a live demonstration of the concepts you were teaching. The teachers say the test results have improved and they will not call any child a slow learner, it is just that different methods needs to be used to teach them. The message that all children are not the same has also opened up their eyes to use different methods like audio, video and activity methods.
The message of this article is that all of you have the potential to transform the world, and the world is not some big thing, it starts with the person next to us. Most of the time we are waiting for someone to come and change the system – but instead, let’s get up and take the first step. I am sure, there are many Murali’s waiting to be discovered in the youth.
(The author, Dr Uma Garimella, is an expert on teaching learning process and regularly conducts workshops for teachers and students. She is a consultant at Centre for Education Technology and Learning Sciences, IIIT-H and Honorary Director, Centre for Faculty Development and Management, NMREC, Hyderabad.)