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COOKING UP A TOUGH LIFE - CONTINUED

This desire to not let the ball drop is egging us on. This time, Ramanan & I went over to Prerana's office last evening. Prerana (introduced to me by both Madhulika and Kab) is an NGO that is doing yeoman service in educating meritorious students from financially disadvantaged families.





The idea was to meet Mr. Pramod Kulkarni who founded Prerana over a decade ago in Banashankari, Bangalore, to figure out ways we could work together. We came back with loads of ideas, dos and don'ts, and enormous respect for the man who is quite literally building lives and giving hopes to talented youngsters. 
I won't bore you with the details of our conversation, but we now have some good inputs to start the organisation we desire to start, helping disadvantaged children get education - a slight departure from Prerana's focus on meritorious students.
Three girls who are finishing their 12th grade thanks to Prerana happened to be at the Prerana office. Pramod, Mr. Nagarajan a donor, Ramanan, I, four of the girls, and a mother all sat in a circle in a small room. Then each girl started talking about her family background, how she came in touch with Prerana, how the NGO counselled, provided financial help, provided soft skills & spoken english training, monitored progress, convinced the family see merit in her continuing studies, and ensured that she remained focused on school. Each of them is of course a high achiever. But the heart-wrenchingly nice stuff were something else - well turned out girls, confident, extremely positive, not using their family situation as a crutch, and talking about their ambitions. One wants to be a bio-technologist, one an electronics engineer, one is swinging between med school & math major, and the fourth is not sure at all; three of the four wants to invent stuff that will help humanity in a big way. None may at all, but who am I to judge - I liked the spirit.
I walked away phenomenally charged, and doubly certain that it is now up to us to make this dream of ours happen. Wish us luck, folks.

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