Providing Education to the underprivileged students

Five friends along with few others spend around 30 lakhs annually for scholarships to underprivileged students through SIRDS organization.

Till now, 1398 underprivileged students have been helped through the SIRDS organization with over one crore rupees worth of scholarships. The organization helps anyone from 4th class till any higher studies. Yearly fees of these students is borne by this organization. The organization identifies students who are very poor or whose parents are critically ill and cannot afford school education and provides the scholarships. Most of the required donations are contributed by the couples Mohan-Anushruti and Manish-Lakshmi Prasanna. They are IT employees settled in the USA. They also established a branch there. They even encouraged their colleagues and friends to contribute to this noble cause. If required, they even do Overtime to provide the necessary money for these students. Every year, they spend around 30 lakhs rupees for these scholarships. But all this would have not been possible without their friend Hemasekhar. Hemasekhar is the founder of SIRDS  (SOCIAL INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY) and also the main person driving the organization and identifying the students by going to remote villages.

Hemasekhar belongs to Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh. Having lost his father during his 5th class, his mother took many hardships bringing up him and his sister. During his degree, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment in a hospital. During such visits to the hospital, he was moved how some people voluntarily came forward for blood donation and also provided financial support for few patients. Though his mother died of cancer, with the inspiration he got from the people who helped him, he too wanted to contribute to the society. 

As an accountant, he contributed through his salary for needs of poor students like buying books and paying their school fees. For this, he established SIRDS in 2003. During one of the programmes in Tirupati Mahila University, professor Vijayalakshmi was impressed by his services and started contributing to the organization. Having seen the professor, then VC of the university, Madhavi, also started contributing to the organization. Through Madhavi, her nephew Mohan became friend of Hemasekhar. Later, Mohan's wife Anushruti, Mohan's friend Manish and his wife Lakshmi Prasanna also joined hands with Hemasekhar. Together they increased the standard of the scholarships from 2014 to fund courses like Engineering, MBBS, MBA. 

Not just providing scholarships, they even established 65 free tuition centers under 'Akshara Yagnam' for the poor students in remote villages. Through these centers, they are able to identify bright students from the fourth class and help them in their education.