Mysuru: Here is a special teacher who is doing work quietly with the ‘Out of System’ children. He is M.R. Ananth Kumar, who quit his engineering career, settled in a village and started ‘Kaliyuva Mane.’

He started this special school for underprivileged children with the motto ‘School for Children, not Children for School’ in 1999 at Kenchalagudu village on Manandavadi Road in Jayapura Hobli, Mysuru taluk.

Ananth Kumar started staying in the village from Aug. 1992, carrying out intense grassroots level research through supplementary classes for rural poor children from 6 am to 8 am and 7 pm to 8 pm.

The response was good and as a logical consequence ‘Kaliyuva Mane,’ a full-fledged school was started in 2005. Here school drop-outs, child labourers, children from traumatic backgrounds, children from broken families and underprivileged children get a chance to live and are able to start new lives all over again.

Also, since there are very few limited schools for the children suffering from dyslexia, Kaliyuva Mane, an eco-conscious school has come as a significant support to learn despite the learning challenge, and to lead a better life.

Divya Deepa Charitable Trust, an NGO in Mysuru, is the one which runs this alternative school.

There are many under-graduate students from SJCE, NIE, MMC&RI, students of SDM-IMD, besides IT professionals from Bengaluru who are volunteers of the Trust.

Apart from all these volunteers, there is Milaap, the crowd-funding platform through which Ananth Kumar is trying to raise funds for this cause.

One of the unique features is that the school has a kid’s bank inside the campus in which all children have personal savings account. For more information visit: https://milaap.org/fundraisers/forDIVYADEEPA.