AIM for Seva: Committed to rebuilding careers, nurturing dreams of underprivileged children

RITU JHA-

Rebuilding careers and nurturing the dreams of children across rural India AIM for Seva has come a long way since its initiation in 2000.

The flagship program of AIM for Seva’s rural education is chatralayas – residential schools – that began at the foothills of the Nilgiris in India.

On Oct 28, the organization walking in the footsteps of its founder Swami Dayananda Saraswati, hosted an annual appreciation gala that helped raise funds to educate 400 underprivileged children in India.

The vision to educate underprivileged children came from an elderly woman who in 1999 requested Swami Dayananda to help village children who had to walk seven kilometers to attend school, across an unsafe forest.

Empathizing with their dilemma, Swami Dayananda Saraswati resolved to establish a hostel network across the country and that laid the foundation for AIM for Seva. Today, AIM for Seva runs 94 chatralayas and 189 projects in 17 states of India. The flagship program – Chatralaya includes projects in the areas of healthcare, care for adults and children with developmental delays, and sustainable living programs.

Vijay Kapoor, director AIM for Seva Bay Area.

AIM for Seva movement in the Bay area is spearheaded by Vijay Kapoor who has been associated with Swami Dayananda Saraswati since 1976. In 2006  “I collected about $40,000 from my students and myself, and we helped build an annex to a high school in Rishikesh. That was my first fundraising but we didn’t have an organized way of collecting funds until 2010. At Swamiji’s 80th birthday celebration in Coimbatore, which I attended, the COO of the program, Srini Raman, suggested that an annual program could be organized for fundraising across all chapters of AIMS in the US.  In 2012 Rukmini Vijaykumar, came to the US to stage the first of the events and we were
surprised at the good backing we got from our friends. We all contributed a lot of money and we collected about $250,000, which made us one of the biggest centers in the US in 2012. And we have maintained that lead. This idea for an annual fundraiser has turned out to be a very good thing.”

The Chatralaya program is not just education, says Kapoor, it’s meant to take care of students for several years until they are ready to go out into the world. “That is seva (service) in the true sense and that is our mission.” And the mission impact has been growing – it began with 32 boys and now AIM for Seva works with more than 4000 students. But, as the project expands to include more students, there are many challenges too. “If you look at the demographic, the demographics of India a very big percentage is in villages that are so remote that education has not reached them. The people living in these villages are subsisting on agriculture. We focus our energies on those people, the ones who need the most help. It’s a challenge because our Swamis and other people go out to these villages most of these families are a little bit more prone to let the boys go, but they are afraid to let their girls stay in a hostel to study. Even though we want to have a 50-50 ratio between girls and boys, we are not able to do that. Not because we don’t want to, but because the villagers don’t agree to it. I think at this point it’s more like 25-75, or maybe 30-70. We are putting all our efforts into building chatralayas for girls and convincing people to send the girls to our residential schools. It’s not an easy process, it takes a lot of work.”

Rukimini Vijayakumar, acclaimed artist and long-time supporter of AIM for Seva performed at the Oct 28, gala.

This reluctance to let girls study in chatralayas is reflected in many states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh Haryana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh where the number of boys’ chatralayas is far more. “There are some demographics which make it difficult for the villagers to trust other people. In Bihar, I think it’s very particular because they keep their girls at home. The trust will take time to build for girls. But we are trying and this reluctance is changing as the word gets around.” AIM for Seva is now making a concerted effort to focus on the girls. “And hopefully that will be a campaign.”

While the Chatralaya program and rural student outreach continue to be their main focus, AIM for Seva is also aiming to expand into bigger centers. “There are five of them that have now come up. The one in Roorkee is going to start next year. We will start with a minimum of two chatralayas, one for girls, and one for boys with classes up to the sixth standard. Eventually, we will have a high school. This is exactly what we did in Indore, after five years it became a high school. The same thing will happen in Roorkee and other new projects. We will not stop there, we will also have some staff training quarters, computer labs, and solar labs.”

These new projects will be a combination of chatralayas and day schools. “When we established the chatralaya, we also helped the school people to recruit the right teachers. Since we already have teachers who are staying on the campus for the residential students, it also became imperative to reach out to those students who can take
the same education during the day and go back home after school. This has become a new addition to our strategy. But, the problem with that is that we need much more money for this. Luckily, many generous donors from Bay area, have stepped in with over $100K for the new complexes. This new academic strategy of building School-Chatralya complexes requires an investment of a million dollars for each campus, whereas the Chatralaya project is operational with $100,000.”

“There are two or three main challenges and one of them is to make sure that we have people in the US who are committed to the cause. This is why we appeal to people to visit a project site and be inspired by all the effects of the money donated by them – the changes in children’s lives due to your donation. Another big challenge is to
find the managers of these chatralayas, because it’s a huge responsibility. We have been quite lucky so far but I have a feeling that this is going to be our main challenge – to find committed people who are very good at taking care of chatralayas.”

“Every time a student goes to a college, we feel very happy. Anytime they get a high score or they get a job we are very pleased. We are hoping that the people will share our happiness that these children have become productive citizens. I think we’ll be hearing more and more stories about college students in the years to come.”

Srini Raman (left) with Ram Mandalam at AIM for Seva donor appreciation annual gala held Oct. 28, at Santa Clara Convention Center, Calif.

Srini Raman, COO at Aim for Seva told indica what makes such galas great, said, “I work two years in advance and fortunately we have good resources and we curate a program and customize like… we had impromptu, and last year we did similar impromptu with artist Abby V.”

“We worked with Rukmini Vijayakumar and she performed so well… and this shows that just two musicians can still create an impactful dance drama,” Raman said and added with a pause when asked what makes AIM for Seva different is, “We all have a seva attitude and the Swamiji
says the purpose of a human being is to grow from a consumer to a contributor.”

Priya Kasturi, along with several long-time donors pledged $10,000 each at the gala which would support 20 girls/students for a year. She told indica, “ I like the idea of education and continuing through it rather than just giving a one-time. Girls’ education is something foremost important for me and my grandparents were professors.”

Rani Goel(left) with Sushma Bhatia.

Asked what more she would like to see from AIM for Seva do said to be able to host more donations instead of just once a year. “They could allow a child to fundraise during birthday and do crowdsource and raise funds for themselves.

Sushma Bhatia, another long-time supporter of the successful appreciation gala and a major donor to AIMS said, “We are not just entertainment but entertainment with a purpose. We donate all year long and we raised over $150,00 just on the spot.”

Rani and Ajit Goel have been supporting AIMS since 2012. Rani on her trip to India in September, visited the Swami Dayananda High School in Rishikesh, the girls’ hostel near Haridwar, and the upcoming new school-Chatralaya complex in Roorkee where she and her family have pledged to sponsor a school wing in memory of her mother who herself was highly educated and a science teacher in girls high school in New Delhi.

She said, “ I firmly believe in education, especially for girls and I feel very fulfilled to support and volunteer for AIMS which is working to educate the most marginalized children in India.”. During her visit, she spoke at length to many students and with the principal of the High School and feels very confident that AIMS is making a difference in the lives of these children.”