Summary
All 18 underprivileged students were coached by Odisha based NGO—Zindagi foundation, founded by Ajay Bahadur Singh
Ajay Bahadur Singh is the founder of the NGO
All 18 students of Zindagi foundation proved that dreams do come true if they worked hard for it, by cracking the NEET UG 2021. Being from an underprivileged background, these students faced the oddities of the pandemic, poverty and other challenges but nothing stopped them achieving their dreams.
The Zindagi foundation helped these students to prepare for the medical entrance exam. It has been training talented children from deprived sectors in Odisha to qualify in NEET UG entrance by providing them free coaching, food and lodging. The NGO was founded in 2017 and is run by Ajay Bahadur Singh.
Singh also aspired to become a doctor but couldn’t complete his medical education due to his poor financial conditions. His vision of training these children arose from his unfulfilled dream.
The students who cracked NEET-UG 2021 are children of parents who are milk vendors, a rickshaw puller, a landless farmer and a weaver. These students cracked screening tests conducted in Odisha by the Zindagi foundation. Shivani Mehar who is the daughter of a weaver scored 577 while Murshid Khan, whose father is a rickshaw puller scored 610. Subhas Chandra Behera has managed to score 595 making his father who is a milk seller, proud.
On November 2, Ajay Bahadur Singh posted on Facebook saying, “The happiness of Diwali has arrived two days earlier. All my 18 children of the Zindagi Foundation have successfully qualified in NEET 2021. Overcoming poverty, hunger, lockdown and all other obstacles they have achieved their goals and are on the way to become doctors.”
Singh spent years upgrading his skills to make sure he was up to date imparting knowledge to these students efficiently. He also took the help of other experts. After all, these students were competing with other privileged students who had access to better study material.
And since physical classes were not possible during the lockdowns, Singh and his team arranged for smartphones so that the students could continue with their preparations.
Zindagi foundation has garnered appreciation from the chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik and Hindi film actor Hrithik Roshan.
Last updated on 03 Nov 2021
