Making the Difference - Our Success Stories

 In the small village of Karumarapakkam (Near Thirukazukundram, Tamil Nadu), caste and religious emotions ran deep. The residents saw little beyond their village. This was the condition that Project REEP sought to transform.

A modest start was made with a 5-member team regularly visiting the village school. Volunteers introduced the children to the world beyond their physical boundaries and taught them life skills to compete in it. The school became a hub of education, culture and learning. The result - communal differences started dissolving into oblivion.

Indeed, as Margaret Mead rightly said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has".

- Project REEP - Karumarapakkam

 Karthik was playing dual roles as a student as well as seller to support his family. We first met him while he was selling pens at Trichy railway station in year the 2010. He has been selling pens to chase his dream of education since class VI and his endurance finally paid him fruits. Dreams Alive supported this candidate as part of our educational sponsorship program to complete his diploma education and now he is placed as trainee of Delphi TVS near Chennai this 2013.

Karthik expressed his whole hearted thanks and commented that this is the best way to pay back to the society which helps every individual in its own way. We are sure that people like him will definitely work for raising the standards those around themselves!".

- Success Story of Karthick, Tirchy - Educational sponsorship program

 Nagarani's father is a goldsmith with a monthly income around 3500 INR. A rented house swallows more than half of his income leaving only around 1500 INR in hand. Her younger sister is a class 10 student at the Govt. Girls Higher Secondary School. Nagarani has completed her studies and got placed in 4 companies (ICICI Bank, TCS, AXIS Bank, Bajaj Capital) despite struggling to continue her studies due to her financial constraints some time back. She now has options in front of her life rather than choices and isn’t her confusion a good one to have?".

- Success Story of Nagarani

 We identified Manikandan through an advertisement in Deccan Chronicle newspaper. We contacted Manikandan’s teacher who was helping him with his higher studies. Manikandan completed his school education by working as a part time worker in Brick Making Factory along with other family members. He didn’t have mobile or landline and so his family. During initial verification the teacher told that college fees for this candidate has been paid and only hostel fees need to be arranged. Keeping this in mind we collected the required hostel fees only from our volunteers. When Nags, our volunteer from Coimbatore went to pay the hostel fees he was shocked to hear that Manikandan has not yet paid his college fees. Only Rs 19,000/- has been paid and still around Rs 50,000/- has to be paid. When we were planning to collect more funds to help Manikandan, he did something else.

He met the college administration team and told that he will not be able to pay his fees and so he took the paid amount of 19k back and started to his village. When we enquired him he told that an official from Salem collector office would help him in getting the admission. But it didn’t get succeed, we never want this boy to miss his golden chance of coming up in life. We told him to communicate with us at least once in a day to update the results of his studies. Manikandan started to feel the heat when nothing seems to be happening related to his admission in Salem.

Mr. Gopal who is a sr. official in leading MNC helped a lot here; He told immediately to send a brief detail about Manikandan and also assured that he will talk to KCT-college Administration who is well known to him. Manikandan came to Chennai and stayed in our volunteer’s room for five days and also celebrated Independence Day with us in our adopted school in Anakaputhur. Finally, as assured Gopal spoke to Chief Officer of KCT about the candidate and also about the support which team Dreams Alive was ready to do for Manikandan. Dedicated volunteerism will achieve its goal; the same was proved by all of us who constantly did all the things as per the design. Finally, the KCT Management agreed to re-admit Manikandan and he is a student of Electronic & Instrumentation Engineering in this prestigious institute. All is well in the end, isn’t it?".

- Success Story of Manikandan