Dhanbad-based Maithon Power Limited has ventured into a new arena, spreading the light of literacy to empower poor children to compete with students from private English-medium schools.

Under its corporate social responsibility initiatives, the power utility has decided to organise special classes at three state-owned middle schools under its command areas in Nirsa block of the district to bridge the gap between private and government cradles vis-à-vis quality of teaching.

To start with, the public-private company formally launched the mission at girls' middle school, Pandra, on Friday to impart quality education to around 350 students from Class I to Class VIII.

Subsequently, middle school, Poddardih, and middle school, Kandra, will be brought under the ambit of this mission being executed by NGO Whiz Mantra.

"We will teach students through an age-appropriate learning method. We will hold regular intervention classes and engage kids through interesting activities," said project manager of Whiz Mantra Sucharita Mukherjee after the inauguration of the project at the girls' middle school.

District education officer Dharmadeo Rai, Maithon power's station head Sabyasachi Mukherjee and its CSR head Mritunjay Rai and school principal Umakant Singh were present on the occasion.

Company's CSR head Ray sad: "Our objective is to help children from our operation areas get better education."

Elaborating on the plan, Sucharita said four local youths had been hired after proper training for the girls' school to hold special classes, which would be held during normal school hours between 10am and 4pm.

"We will not interrupt the normal schedule and will just aid them with our manpower and special teaching method in order to fill the gap," she maintained.

Sources claimed all the three schools lacked teachers and thus, were selected for the project. The girls' middle school has only two teachers to take care of 350 students while Poddardih school has only one teacher for 350-odd children and Kandra cradle has three mentors to tutor 500 students.

Further, Whiz Mantra's project manager said the youths, hired by them, would use Raspberry Pi computers for visual inputs to make the process of learning more interesting and effective.

Students will be encouraged with gifts likes chocolate, pens, pencils etc. on a daily basis for performing well or answering questions, she added.