Kirba Sanskar Kendra: The Story of Inception

In 2001, in one of our sakha in  Biswakarma Sakha ground, we discussed about the rampant conversion that was going at nearby places ( Kirba and Panitanki), in and around UCE college. With a strong conviction, we decided not to take on Christian missionaries directly but to defeat them in their own terms. We very well knew that before opposing the missionaries, we needed to make our own ground first. This was a shame to all of us if we could not provide the basic amenities to our brotherhood who are living in slums and deprived of food, shelter, good education etc.

Thus initiated the thought of creating and taking up some SEWA works in nearby village Kirba. And the best way, we could do it by providing them education as that would have been best fit to us, engineers. Also, this may break the ice between the villages and us. Nobody could have taken us in our face value if we went preaching there about the missionary activities. So, we decided to start the ground work  by providing them the services they were deprived of so far.

The first challenge was to how to start the activities and whom to approach first. In one of the  Saturday, we just thought of going to the village and meet some senior persons over there and discuss these issues briefly. Our earlier sampark yatra provided the much needed confidence to us. As far as I remember, me and Rupesh bhai went to Kirba village and we enquired about the Sarpanch. There was no Sarpanch but they gave us the address of one senior most person who could have helped us in this regard. We straightway approached him and met him in his home and proposed that we would like to start a Sanskar Kendra where in we would like to teach the students from Kirba village free of cost, mostly to the students who are in matriculation so that we could help them score good marks for a brighter future.

He was much interested and with in no time invited some other villagers to discuss this. They almost suddenly accepted the proposal and told us that they could arrange for the place and also do the basic things like arranging for electricity and do all the clean up works. But they said that there were not more than 7 to 8 students studying in matriculation but would be interested to send students who are there in high schools if we could teach them also. We agreed as we needed to reach to most of the student community there.

Then with 2 to 3 visits to Kirba village with Santosh Bhai, Tushar Bhai and some other swayamsevaks, we finalised on the primary school that was lying vacant. It was like having one big room which could accommodate some 50 to 60 odd students. We finalised a day for inauguration of the sanskar Kendra and invited Chita bhai ( Prof. Chittaranjan Tripathy) to do the inauguration. On the day of inauguration, the villages made all the arrangements like lights, fans and cleaning too. We took along the photo of Bharat Mata, Saraswati mata, Doctorji and Guruji and started the Sanskar Kendra with Nariyal phod (Coconut breaking) by Chita Bhai. Chita bhai was all praise for this activity and gave an inspiring and motivating Boudhik( address)  to all villagers.

At the starting day, we had students not only from high schools but also from nursery to our surprise. Actually, this activity drew lot of attention not only from villagers but also from the children. They thought of this like someone coming to teach them about sports, games and engage them. Parents were very happy that they did not have to run after their children in the evening and side by side they would learn a lot of things from these engineers.

Our challenge was that how to handle so many of them (about 50 to 60 in numbers), we initially thought of 2 swayamsevaks could go to Kirba in the evening and teach them different subjects. But with students’ strength increasing, we had to do a full fledged meeting and decided that we will formally start a sanskar Kendra in round robin format there where we could teach them about health and sanitation, how to keep themselves clean, good morals and impart value based education to them. So we decided that we will form some 3 to 4 groups who would be taking different activities there like one group taking the sanskar activities and other group would teach them some games and some martial arts and one group focussing on education, the priority to be given to matriculation students as they needed it the most.

So we came up with a chart (monthly works divided into weekly break ups and then daily activities with responsibilities divided with Swayamsevaks). We formally started the evening sanskar kendras from 6pm to 8PM after our sakha time and concentred on teaching them. We were amazed to see the potential in them; some of the students were brilliant. They were all well mannered; we just helped them chisel their qualities as mentors.

The results were amazing in matriculation exam. Out of the 8 students, 7 students got passed in the exam with 3 students with higher second class marks. They were overwhelmed and they wanted to give us something back in lieu of our teaching to them. But with Sangh’s principles, we urged them to start this kind of activity wherever they will be and help under privileged students free of cost and impart whatever they have learned from us.

As far as I remember, this activity was going on after we passed out from UCE and the tradition was kept alive by swayansevaks like Varun bhair and Rupesh bhai. I am happy that this activity has taken a full shape by now and the current swayamsevals are doing a great work over there which would definitely help our society move a notch higher in terms of social, cultural and economical ways.

Bharat  mata ki Jai.