-Dipta Joshi

Shashi Prakash Singh, a chemistry teacher from Ballia, Uttar Pradesh has initiated ‘Mission 2021’  to provide financial support to aid the education of underprivileged children affected due to COVID pandemic. The 36-year-old currently associated with online teaching platform Unacademy, has already provided financial aid to 300 students across the country’s northern and eastern states. 

Believing education is an apt tool for self-development and can directly impact one’s income generation capacity, the College of Engineering, Roorkee alum has dipped into his personal savings to promote his cause. Extending the initiative to students from the southern and western states of India too, ‘Mission 2021’ hopes to help students orphaned due to Covid, students belonging to families facing financial crisis due to loss of jobs during the pandemic as well as students from economically weaker sections of society. The mission which has a cap of spending Rs 25,000 on each student aspires to provide financial support towards school fees and other educational resources like stationery, laptops, etc. as well as providing counselling to the students. 

“The situation is so grave, especially in cases where the children have lost their parents to the pandemic that lakhs of children are dropping out of the education system and are being forced to work as labourers to provide for themselves and their families. There is an urgent need for everyone to add to the central and state government’s efforts. Besides, government schemes have to adhere to certain parameters and have to mandatorily go through certain checks, all of which may require time and effort as they depend on factors like geographical boundaries, population etc. This may sometimes end up delaying the benefits. I believe those of us who are in touch with the student community directly should take the initiative to do so,” says Shashi Prakash Singh.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announced a scheme to support children who lost both parents due to the pandemic or even those having a surviving parent or legal guardian/adoptive parents under the ‘PM-Cares for Children’ fund. The scheme envisages creating a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each child until the age of 18 year with a monthly stipend for five years from age 18 to aid the student’s higher education. At age 23, he or she would be given balance corpus amount for personal or professional use. PM’s scheme also promises admission at the Kendriya Vidyalayas, Sainik schools, Navodaya Vidyalayas or private schools to pandemic affected children. The scheme further offers education loans for pursing higher education whose interest will be paid by the ‘PM Cares for Children’ fund.