There might be millions of ways to keep in touch with your school time friends but to be in regular touch with over a hundred of those seems almost an impossible task. With the same problem statement in mind a batch of schoolmates came together with an idea of mingling philanthropy and fun (since being in touch with your childhood friends is always fun).

They have formed a group ‘AVLAMB’ which literally means support and apart from regular get-togethers the main agenda of this group is to ‘uplift under-privileged schools’ and provide them necessary support in order to make them stand equal to any other private school. This will create a domino effect and will eventually help the rural students getting the appropriate facilities and exposure.

As a start they have adopted a government school in Jogi Talab Village, Udaipur. This school has a strength of 211 students coming from under-privileged families. The aim of the group is to uplift the school and students in such a way so that it becomes a look-upto example in the entire country.

This initiative aims at providing easy access to high quality education for underprivileged rural children. The approach to this is to improve:

• The hard infrastructure – class rooms, computer labs, libraries and laboratories, toilets and playgrounds
• Soft infrastructure – teaching content, teacher training, teaching/learning materials, etc.
• Collaboration – more effective parent-teacher association and school–community interaction.

One of their member explained their goal as “We seek to convert rural (Government) schools into Model Schools so that they are on par with the best run city schools in terms of infrastructure and performance. We are developing a School Betterment Plan (SBP) for each school and monitor their progress through a tool called Model School Composite Index (MSCI) given by Byraju Foundation”

In few months’ time they have already distributed notebooks, pen, pencils, sports items and plants to make school premise look beautiful. Recently with the help of Pacific Dental College they organized a Free Dental check-up camp in the school and handed out toothbrushes to the kids.