Aluminium - Enriching A Billion Lives

There’s no communication in the society without a common, bankable and agreed upon language. Kui is such a beautiful South-Central-Dravidian language spoken by the Kondh tribes in the western parts of Odisha. It was also known as the Kalinga language during the historical times. These tribes are native of the hills in Koraput and Kalahandi district. For several years even after independence, the region has been grappling with abject poverty and neglect. Although much has been said about the infamy of this region in media, it has been conveniently been forgotten in the time that has gone by. It is excruciatingly tough for a person who is not from these parts of the country to fathom how a woman could sell her 12-year-old sister-in-law, to a blind man for Rs. 40 and a sari to feed her family. It is a region which has seen the worst imaginable droughts, unabashed child selling, malnutrition and rampant starvation deaths that the social workers started referring it as ' Kalaha...

“I want to become a doctor” says a girl from one of the few indigenous tribes in the hills of Niyamgiri…In English. In a region where rampant malarial and starvation deaths were once infamous, today, there is hope. It is miraculous to hear such words from the local children who have their own dreams and are guided by their parent’s ambitions. Most of them have come from extremely humble families, yet many others have never seen 2 proper meals in a single day. A large majority of them belong to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The lives of many local families and tribes has changed for the better as they realize that education can open many shut doors for their future.  This is probably the first time such formal education has been made available for experience in the hills. Government initiatives and schemes had made little impact mainly due to lack of proper implementation. In addition, another fatal issue hindered any signs of progress that could have been ...

Living in the bustling towns and cities in India, we’ve often wondered “ What if I had got a chance to study in XYZ school? My life would have been so different! ” It is we who have understood the value of imparting and receiving education to our children to make them better people. We try to make eligible citizens out of our children and give them a respectable place in our society. But what about those people who have been left ignored all along? In regions where starvation deaths have haunted the people since a long time, what value does education hold for them? Is it any good to preach to people with empty stomachs? DAV Vedanta International School Lanjigarh, situated in Kalahandi, Odisha is one of the most backward regions of the country. For long, people of this region hadn’t witnesses any kind of development. In the year 2006-07, anchored by Vedanta, the foundation of DAV Vedanta International School was laid in the region with merely 6 students in Nursery. Now, the s...