SHE SACRIFICED A HIGH-FLYING CAREER & FOUGHT AGAINST ALL ODDS TO BRIGHTEN LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF KIDS
From last seven years, Vrundan Bawankar has been managaing a rural school located in Pawni village of Bhandara district (80 km from Nagpur). Till her graduation, Vrundan had not planned to get into the Education field. As destiny would have it, she was faced with the gruesome reality of the state of education in the village and that changed her thought process and her life forever.
Vrundan comes from Nagpur and as a child always dreamt of joining the armed forces as a pilot. During graduation, she focused a lot of NCC (National Cadet Corps) activities. She participated in the Republic Day Parade camps, Microlight Flying, Scuba diving expeditions, which all excited her immensely. She was awarded the Best Cadet title and a gold medal at NCC. Her experiences and learning were getting her closer to her long-term dream.
Several schools in the city felicitated her and invited her to interact with their students. One such invitation was from Gram Vikas Sanstha at Pawni. She was shocked to see the state of affairs at the school and complained about it to her parents. She was told that it was a common scenario in village schools and merely complaining doesn’t help. These thoughts continued to run through her mind for several days, till she decided to take charge of the situation herself. She was twenty-one.
Vrundan joined in the administration at the Pawan Public School. There were huge challenges in the initial phase — from the infrastructure, quality teachers to the mindsets of the children and their parents. Vrundan dealt with all of them strongly. In 2016, Vrudan completed seven years as the director of the school. She recalls “I had initially thought that I would devote two years to the school and change the things. But it took me three years to just understand and change the mindsets and after that some real transformational work started.”
Vrundan has been doing things that she never imagined she would do. There was corruption at the local level, that she reported to the higher levels. She raised funds to repair the school building, where water used to leak through the roofs during monsoon. There were some shortcomings and errors in the school Geography textbooks, for which Vrundan and her team translated the content from other books, which was later adopted by around 200 rural schools in the district. The school structure was run over by a bulldozer, as a local politician wanted to acquire the land. “The matter is in the court and we are fighting it out. It’s not easy to fight these people, but it’s okay. I know that we would face many ups and downs on this path. The vision to bring good education to so many kids, gives us the energy to keep going on” shares Vrundan.
Vrundan’s school has become a role model for many rural schools. Several initiatives, such as ‘Cultural Exchanges’ or ‘Open Lab’ are helping in all-rounded development of the children. Parents and the entire community has been involved in the process of child-development. The teacher training workshops have assisted the teachers to greatly improve the quality of teaching. In 2013, Vrundan got associated with Pratham Education Foundation for projects involving betterment of rural children and youth and for rehabilitation of rural villagers affected by Gosikhurd Dam project. The aim is to create an employment for at least thousand women of Gosikhurd dam affected villages, who have lost their land & are relocated to abandoned places.
Vrundan advice to young people who want to contribute to the society, “If you are prepared to come to a village, we are open to accept volunteers, for anywhere from 8 days to 8 months. However, I think you don’t necessarily have to think of coming to a village and serving the poor. Start from where you are. The attitude is most important”.
