Ushatai Lokhande Trust, Kamshet

Visit to Ushatai Lokhande Trust, Kamshet From: Anand Dhole - First of all I would like to share short info about the Ushatai Lokhande Trust. This trust works for orphan children in providing them education, food, shelter and other basic necessities related to them. They also help them to set their future by helping them to choose their profession. They try to give basic education along with the professional education. They are operating a school named Dev Vijay School where 130 students are part of it. Also they have one hostel where 30 orphan or single parent children are accommodated. They are availed with the facilities of break fast, lunch and dinner. Trust is doing great job even though they are facing with lot of difficulties. Students come from nearby villages to take the education. As this trust is not granted by the government, teachers who teach students are highly qualified [M.A. B ED/ B.SC B.ED], work on very less salary called “Maandhan” and travel around 60 Kms both the way. Their commitment towards this trust is really praiseworthy. I have mixed feelings about the experience. I felt happy & content for being there & getting an opportunity to interact with them & I felt sad as I got to know how thorny life, children are living and blessed with energy to fight for difficulties. I would like to do something for them. Again, I am being selfish because I am doing this for the satisfaction I will get from it. But another thing I learnt was, it’s very difficult for them to get even basic necessities yet when it comes to educational achievement, they are achieving the best when what is available is so less. The farthest distance traveled by some children daily is 15 to 20 Kms. They have to walk by an old railway track through fields even to come to the pick up point of the school bus. This shows how high their spirit is towards education. They have to work in the fields & at home after school hours to get their food. Can’t we help them to get their primary education and basic necessities like food? There is no comparison between our life and their life. A small but serious thing, we take 5 to 10 min. to take one good apple from the basket but they don’t have fruits to eat. They are deprived from Milk which the most basic requirement for children because they don’t have budget to bare the cost of it. It was very nice to see the happiness when we distributed food packets. It was like Diwali for them. It was feeling after so many days they were getting something good to eat. They also welcomed us by giving ‘SRIFAL’ and Rosé. It was a great experience for me. Now emotions are overcoming my words so I am stopping here. We need to take initiative to get them their basic necessities I would like to appeal all the BMC employees to take a part of such holy thing and make proud our self.