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MANGALURU: A few kgs of home-grown vegetables to feed scribes and their families descending on this coastal city for the two-day 35th state conference of journalists’ getting underway here on Saturday is certainly not enough. Yet making this small yet meaningful gesture to the conference that Karnataka Union of Working Journalists is organising was the School Development and Monitoring Committee of Government Upgrade Higher Primary School, Kuthloor in Belthangady taluk.
Handing over an assortment of vegetables grown in the 0.5-acre school garden to the host association – DKWJU on Friday, Ramachandra Bhat, SDMC member said things have only looked bright for this rural school ever since DKWJU held a ‘grama vastavya’ there on December 23, 2018. “Ours was a school on the verge of closure with dwindling student strength and fortunes changed since the union chose it for their village stay. We just wanted to repay their kindness,” Bhat said.
The school garden, thanks to the SDMC is flush with 14 types of vegetables such as pumpkin, long beans, tomatoes, bitter gourd all of which are used in the mid-day meals served to the 66 students studying there. Excess vegetables, if any, is sold to parents of students and the villagers and funds generate used for betterment of school, says Prashant, assistant teacher. Students help Bhat in watering the garden prior to start of school and even help him in this task on holidays
Vegetables are organic in that only cow dung slurry and green compost is used to grow them. Barring the cucumber patch that is old and needs replanting, other vegetable patches are thriving, he says. This in-house effort and campaign from SDMC has enthused villagers to enrol their wards to this school which has seen its strength rise to 66 and teachers. School has six staff, two honorary teachers that DKWJU is funding and two others who take Kannada and spoken English classes for free.
The resurgence of this ‘sarkari’ school has also caught the attention Suresh Kumar, minister for primary and secondary education, who taking note of media reports has planned to visit it during the next academic year and hold an interaction with students there, says Srinivas Nayak Indaje, president, DKWJU. On its part, the SDMC is scaling up efforts to ensure that the enrolment at this school touches 100 when the school reopens for the academic year 2020-21.
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