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Regular-article-logo Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Poor kids get a friend

Most children worry about exams, schoolwork and hobbies when they are in school but not Nishaant Pandey.

Faryal Rumi Published 11.11.15, 12:00 AM
Nishaant Pandey. Telegraph picture

Most children worry about exams, schoolwork and hobbies when they are in school but not Nishaant Pandey.

The Class IX student of St Dominic Savio's High School has formed a team called Adroiters, which has undertaken a project - Bal Sanrakshanam -that aims to educate underprivileged children on the importance of health, sanitation and nutrition.

The project targets kids in the city slums and the team members are school and college students.

"Adroiters is a newly formed youth organisation, which strives to work in the field of education, environment and protection of children's civil rights. It is more of an ideology and our aim is to involve the youth to make the world a better place to live in," said Pravar Ranjan, a third-year student of BN College and the project coordinator.

"We organised camps on October 25 and 26 for slum kids near Patliputra Sports Complex," said Nishaant, who was also a finalist in the Horlicks Wizkids South Asian 2015, a platform for students to exhibit their talents.

"We distributed glucose, iodised salt and biscuits among children. We also invited general physicians to teach the kids about health and hygiene," he added.

Pravar said they were getting a good response from doctors and the parents of the slum kids. "We also take suggestions for improvement. We have organised an essay competition for students of classes VIII to XII in private schools to invite opinions for our betterment," he said.

"Prominent schools like St Michael's High School, International School (CBSE and ICSE), May Flower School, Mt Carmel High School, St Karen's Secondary School, St Xavier's High School, St Karen's High School, BD Public School and Radiant International School, are helping us. We are getting suggestions from them and are also rewarding the best suggestions," said Pravar.

The team has divided the project into two stages - evaluation and solution.

"For the first stage, we are going to the local slums to check the flexibility of development and then we will prepare a chart to clarify problems like education, health, nutrition and sanitation," said Nishaant. "We will take feedback from slum residents. For the second stage, the team will prepare a list of areas that need to be taken care of. A complete solution to the problems will be looked for and a prescription will be made for the government, municipality, non-government organisations and other bodies, guiding them on how to move towards a developed Bihar," Nishaant added.

Other students seemed enthusiastic about offering their full assistance to the project.

"The major nutritional problems affecting slums are protein energy malnutrition, vitamin A deficiency, iron deficiency, anaemia and iodine deficiency disorders. I feel privileged to have sent my suggestions for the betterment of the project," said Anil Sinha, a Class XI student of St Karen's High School.

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