Its very rare to hear stories about a bureaucrat helping ‘AAM AADMI’ regarding their small problems. But Jitendra Kumar Soni a young IAS officer posted in Jalore district, Rajasthan has done something aspiring.
It all happened in December last year when this IAS officer saw three students going to school barefoot in shivering cold, he was astonished to see their dedication towards studies and inquired with their teachers. The teachers informed him that the parents of these kids can’t even afford the prescribed books. He then took them to the market and bought shoes and books for them.
After that, earlier this month, he decided to start a scheme ‘Charan Paduka Yojna’ which would aim to distribute free shoes to around 25,000 underprivileged students whose parents can’t afford shoes and are helpless in going school barefoot in extreme cold weather.
Soni, who hails from a small Dhanasar village in Rajasthan comes from a very humble background. His father is a watchmaker and gave a better education to two of his sons. Soni says, “Even I studied in a government school and know how hard are the conditions for the parents who can’t afford every little thing for their kids.”
The launch of the scheme was not easy as a large database was required in order it to work. Mr. Soni instructed the school authorities of 274 gram panchayats and 3 nagar palikas to give him a detailed report on how many students come barefoot to the school. The report disclosed that around 25,000 students in all have no shoes and come barefoot to the school.
He also added,“Non-branded school shoes costs around 200-300 rupees. This initiative has been started and will work under donations. I thought to start this initiative and sought help from people. This is purely people’s scheme and I’m just a facilitator to ensure that every underprivileged student gets shoes to wear at school.”
Moreover, this scheme is not just for this year. In fact Mr. Soni has planned to keep this initiative running and will keep distributing shoes in Winter before Republic Day and in Summers before Independence Day.
We all salute this IAS Officer for this great initiative.:)
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