24-year-old Golla Prudhvi, from Andhra Pradesh’s Gudivada, approximately 50 km away from Vijayawada district, is one of the pioneering youth visionaries in the field of education supporting quality education for young minds in India.
Hailing from a moderate background and a government school student himself, Prudhvi realized that due to lack of infrastructure and scope, many a time students are deprived of the required knowledge of available opportunities. Giving talented young minds enough exposure to bloom academically in the right direction became the sole purpose of this engineering graduate.
Since 2013, he has shown impeccable commitment towards the Sustainable Development Goal that aims to ensure ‘Quality Education for All’. So far, he has supported about 3.5 lakh students, especially from rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu by providing them with resourceful information on education.
He is one of the recipients of the prestigious Diana Awards this year, for implementing innovative means of approaching the school students in India through various modes. In 2019, he was given the National Youth Award by the Government in India for his remarkable contribution towards national development.
“Awards make me more responsible and committed to the cause of societal development. ‘Come, let’s together develop the nation’ is my mantra for the youth of this country,” Prudhvi humbly says.
In a candid conversation with LifeBeyondNumbers, Prudhvi talks about his inspirations, aspirations, and more.
His Motivation
In 2013, before joining engineering college, he coincidentally happened to meet a girl at an internet café where her father was desperately enquiring about her future opportunities, though had little avenues to access information.
“She was academically bright yet needy. She scored 96 percent in her 11th school final examination. Though I did not know her personally, I could immediately connect. Her father was unable to pay the fees for a decent engineering college and was in distress. He was employed under MGNREGA. I approached to help them”, Prudhvi says.
They hardly had ideas about the available scholarship opportunities in the country but Prudhvi was determined to help. He realized that despite impeccable academic qualities, students from rural areas and lower socioeconomic backgrounds are unable to access the necessary information and ways of its fruitful implementation.
“Upon taking responsibility, I started doing the background work to dig out the necessary information for her. I informed them about the available single girl child scholarships that might help her with higher education. I helped her to apply for several such scholarships and based on her remarkable merit, she was able to receive two of them with an aide of up to 90,000 per year. She eventually completed her graduation and is currently pursuing further studies,” he says with a sense of satisfaction.
As the incident inspired him to transform the lives of aspiring higher education candidates, his journey was about to begin!
When The Journey Began
While pursuing engineering, he pitched the principal of Narayana Junior College, his alma mater, the idea of doing weekend sessions with the students of the government school for disseminating adequate academic information among them.
“In those sessions with the school students, I used to discuss opportunities of scholarships, admission procedures, availability of academic options, competitive examinations, and expose them to public speaking through interactions. Within a year of staring with this initiative it started bearing results with three students from the school succeeding in various ways”, Pruthvi revealed.
In order to explore these options for the students, he himself started learning. Though initially, he started interacting only with the terminal school students, gradually other classes also joined in.
“I used to carry my laptop and a portable internet connection along and hence, whenever students approached me with queries, I used to search and give them the information on the spot,” he said.
After continuing these sessions in his alma-mater for one and a half years, he expanded his work to at least 7 other government schools in the area. Principals of several government schools in the locality approached him for conducting such sessions in their schools.
“I prepared a 200-slides PPT with the relevant information, taken from several web-portals, regarding career opportunities, and started distributing it among a greater number of students. Till 2019, I conducted these sessions in schools”, he mentioned.
Soon, people began to recognize his work and parents started individually visiting me for career consult. He supported them voluntarily and free of cost. “I spent four-hours every day conducting two sessions per day consulting the students and their parents. It was the digital mode of social service,” he explained.
Apart from the schools in Andhra Pradesh, while pursuing Masters in Tamil Nadu in 2017, he became the coordinator of the central government-sponsored Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao cell that was responsible for educating and empowering the rural women of rural Tamil Nadu. During the two years of pursuing his Master’s degree, he substantially stretched the extent of his work to Tamil Nadu.
Milestones Achieved
- He started the “Career call”, a digital platform service, to support “National Educational Mission”. Lakhs of rural students are given free information on higher education, various entrances, scholarships, fellowships, skills development, etc.
- He organized free events on the theme of developing innovative concepts where he supported students in developing the prototype of their innovation and helped them participate in national-level science innovation competitions like “IGNITE”, “Innovation in Residence” etc.
- He served as a campus ambassador for Entrepreneurship cell (e-cell) if several IITs of the country and received a prestigious Merit award and Certificate from U.S.E.S Innovation Competition 2015, for supporting the young students in revolutionizing ideas.
- He organized several free certified workshops for the thousands of rural engineering college students on “Mobile Controlled Wire Robotics”, in collaboration with “I3INDYA TECHNOLOGIES” and on “Entrepreneurship summits” in collaboration with the Entrepreneurship cells to ignite the zeal for the government’s ‘Make in India’ policy among the students of rural colleges.
- He organized AVADAN, events which encourage school students in gaining knowledge through active participation in discussions on five major themes that include Education, Youth Rights, Duties and National Integration, Politics, Scientific and Technological Innovation, and Social Media.
- He participated in serving thousands of rural populations of Tamil Nadu’s Thiruvarur region, especially focusing on issues like plantation, education, sanitation, etc. under the National Service Scheme, Central University of Tamil Nadu Unit.
The Way Ahead
Since he does not have a full-fledged organizational set-up yet, for each of his initiatives Prudhvi has been strategizing and collaborating carefully in order to manage finances. “Every event that I plan and organize takes at least six months of preparation before execution”, he revealed.
But his friends, acquaintances, and previous beneficiaries of his services have volunteered in helping him, every step of the way. Despite the smooth sailing and recognition that he receives now, he started off a bumpy road.
“It was difficult at the beginning. It took some time in confidence-building among people. Multiple times I was denied permission to interact with the students” he told LifeBeyondNumbers. Therefore, even amid the Covid-lockdown, Prudhvi renders unstoppable.
“I utilized the opportunity of sticking to home in my favor. I started by going live through my social media accounts and conducted live online sessions. Alongside online career consultations, there were webinars and opportunities for the students to call and talk to me. I realized many of them are demoralized due to the prolonged lockdown and thus, I even gave them online motivational talks to keep their morale boosted,” he explained.
Having been offered an opportunity of pursuing a Ph.D. in Materials & Nanotechnology at RMIT University, Australia, he is supposed to join the university by February 2021, although he is determined to provide remote services to the Indian students.
“I am going to continue doing the work remotely through online means of communication. I may be able to save some of my stipend money and also have saved some from the reward money I received with the national and international awards. With these savings of mine, I wish to implement scholarships for rural women students,” he mentioned when asked about his future plans.
He is also certain to come back to India once he finishes his degree in Australia. Though he wishes to establish a registered NGO for organizing his work, he awaits gaining financial stability before venturing into it.
Not only does he implement his 4-G principle of development that involves grouping, gathering, growing, and giving in his personal life but also hopes to disseminate them among the youngsters of the nation.
Prudhvi creates an example of culminating small steps of educational support system creation into a bunch of massive initiatives through persistence and perseverance. His selfless generosity, willingness to learn, and urge of knowledge dissemination make him one of this generation’s changemakers.
Changemakers like him are the face of India’s new age youths who are committed to the holistic development of the country, of which education is an integral part.
In case you want to support him in any way possible, you may write to us at editor@lifebeyondnumbers.com.