Varun Shrivastava

Varun Shrivastava is a young social activist from Nagpur, who is working for the upliftment of Under Privileged street children. He is an IIT Kharagpur Alumni,[1] working as a deputy manager at a power sector company, NTPC Ltd. He is well known for his notable work of bringing street children into the mainstream.[2] He is the Founder of UPAY (Under Privileged Advancement by Youth),[3] Which is Providing free of cost education to 1200 Under Privileged Children at 20 different centers across the country. He is also the founder of Apnasaamaan.com, an E-Commerce non profit portal which provides online market to poor artisans. He is popularly known as a Man, turning Footpaths into School,[4] who has started a famous street to school campaign in many cities. Times of India referred him as a Big Brother to street kids. He has been considered among top 10 ordinary Indians[5] doing extraordinary things by Lokmat samachar and many other social media groups.[6] He has inspired hundreds of youth from different backgrounds like doctors, engineers, college students and teachers to take up the street children cause and given them a motto of Reach & Teach underprivileged children.[7] He has replaced begging in the hands of street children bowls by books.[8]

Early life

Nagpur yaswant stadium footpatshala

He belongs to a small village of Jhansi District. He completed his graduation in 2009 from IIT Kharagpur. He worked briefly in Madrid, Spain on a telecommunication Project at a Telecommunication company Telefónica (R&D). Later, He joined NTPC Mouda as a Power Engineer. Though he started his social work journey during his IIT Kharagpur days but it was year 2010 when he formally started a group called UPAY with the help of two socially motivated friends in a small village Kumbhari, Near Nagpur Maharshtra. UPAY got registered in 2011 as an non-governmental organization. The purpose of UPAY was to help underprivileged children in education so that no child is left behind because of lack of guidance.[9]

Spreading education

o positive felicitation

Including Shrivastava, All the volunteers are working professionals who contribute after their office commitments. He got deeply hurt by the condition of poor street children by seeing them every day begging at traffic signals. He decided to bring these left behind children in main stream with the powerful tool of education.[10] He started one of the unique initiative called Footpathshala for the street children in October 2015. It’s an open school which runs at footpaths and provides basic education to street children.[11]

Shrivastava dreams "one day will come when not a single child will sleep hungry at footpaths, when every child will get ready in the morning to go to school not to some dhaba or restaurant for cleaning the utensils, not to some traffic signals for begging and not to some street for picking up the rags".[12]

He has started to get recognition for his work and many volunteers got inspired by him and they joined his movement. Now footpathshala is running in Nagpur, Pune, Gurgaon and Mouda. hundreds of poor children are getting basic education and then 80% of them got enrolled in schools.[13]

Relief work during Nepal earthquake

jiyo dil se awards season IV

When a tragic earthquake struck in Nepal. Thousands of people died, thousands of people gone missing. Help poured in from all over the world. But the most difficult part was to reach and deliver help at affected villages in mountains. He has chosen the uphill task of carrying relief work in mountains. 16 volunteers, mostly college students came forward to join him in this mission. He led a 16 members team and set up a relief camp for 1 week at Nepal.[14]

Awards and recognition

He is the National winner of Jiyo dil Se award season IV by 94.3 my FM.[15] He is The National Winner of Quest For excellence 2013[16] by Power HR forum.[17]

References

  1. ↑ "Meet IITian Varun Shrivastava who teaches slum children". Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  2. ↑ "The Story Of Varun Shrivastava, From IIT To Teaching Slum Children". 2016-01-13. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  3. ↑ "Success-Story of UPAY: Educare of Underpriviledged". nagpurtoday.in. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  4. ↑ "The Story Of Varun Shrivastava, From IIT To Teaching Slum Children". Fresh Tale. 2016-01-14. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  5. ↑ "10 Inspiring Ordinary Indians Who Are Doing Something Extraordinary". Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  6. ↑ Mishra, Shekhar (2016-01-18). "10 Inspiring Ordinary Indians Who Did Extraordinary Things". Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  7. ↑ "Ek UPAY, a solution". 2013-07-21. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  8. ↑ "UPAY aiming to replace begging bowls with books through footpath shala". Times of India. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  9. ↑ "Varun Shrivastava – An IITian is Teaching Slum Kids -". 2016-01-27. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  10. ↑ Parul Khare (2015-03-29), News Nations TV 's "Khabar Achhi hai program" about Footpath shala, An UPAY Initiative., retrieved 2016-08-21
  11. ↑ "Inspiring Young India". Retrieved 2016-08-21 – via Facebook.
  12. ↑ Varun Shrivastava (2016-02-13), UDAAN Shiksha Ki....A story of UPAY, retrieved 2016-08-21
  13. ↑ Parul Khare (2015-05-03), UPAY's Footpathshala at Sahara Samay National TV...., retrieved 2016-08-21
  14. ↑ "Varun Shrivastava". Quora. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  15. ↑ Parul Khare (2016-06-02), jiyo dil se awards 2016 by 94.3 My FM, retrieved 2016-08-21
  16. ↑ "SJVN Ltd : SJVN Hosted Power HR Forum Competition Quest for Excellence". 4-Tradersaccess-date=2016-08-21.
  17. ↑ shrivastava, varun. "Quest FOr excellence Award 2013" (PDF). Power Hr forum.
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