Meet the 30 phenomenal kids who received national awards this year
Palak Kaliya and Kamisetty Venakat, both differently-abled, were among 30 children who received this year’s national awards for exceptional achievement from President Pranab Mukherjee on the occasion of Children’s Day today.
11-year-old Kaliya was given the award for sports. Despite obstacles, she has excelled as an athlete and a soft ball throw player. She has won a silver medal in 50 metre race and soft ball throw in national level competitions held by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports at Kalinga in 2014. 15-year-old Venakat also has an extraordinary skills and qualities like lip reading, singing songs based on tune, giving tunes to the songs, dancing, and parody songs. He has participated in more than 150 programmes at different levels and received many awards and certificates. He was given award for outstanding achievement in the arts.
Among others presented awards at the function included 14-year-old R Vaishali, an outstanding chess player who represented India internationally in many countries. She won a gold medal in under-14 chess competition in Asian Youth chess championship. In the innovation category, 12-year-old Soring Lepcha was given the award for designing a cost effective water filter which can control water-borne diseases in his village. He has installed water filters in community drinking water taps.
10-year-old K Naidbruvane, who plays Mridangam and Tabla, was awarded for his contribution in the field of music. He has participated in more than 100 musical programmes and participated in a program where he played Tabla for 4 hours. 14-year-old Ananya K G was awarded for outstanding contribution in the field of innovation. In his citation it was mentioned that she is an exceptional child with an innovative mind. She has designed an automatic mobile nebuliser that works on solar energy which helps the farmers to spray insecticides in plants.
The motor automatically identifies the plant and sprays the insecticide. This nebuliser reduces manpower, saves money and extra work by the farmers. In addition, she has designed other innovative science models including easy mobile charging machine and simple wooden machine for extracting sugarcane juice. Shubham Jaglan, 11, who won a title in Junior World Golf Championship held at San Diego in the US in July, was awarded in the field of sports.
In individual category, 44-year-old Santhosh G Thomas from Thiruvananthapuram was honoured with Rajiv Gandhi Manav Seva Award for his service in children welfare activities. He has been engaged in the activities for last 24 years and established counseling centres for adolescent children in selected 98 orphanages to teach human and moral values, meditation and ethics. He has formed a special pension scheme for disabled children in association with Life Insurance Corporation of India and more than 2,OOO children are enrolled in the same.
Vaijayanti M Chougala of Karnataka was honoured with the Rajiv Gandhi Manav Seva Award 2015 for her work with the visually-impaired since 36 years. She now works as a resource person in various training programmes on Children’s issue in health and education sectors. She has also organized various workshops, programs on child issues like child rights, child health and nutrition, environment protection and child labour. Besides, she has also been instrumental in the propagation of the system of Ayurveda and Homeopathy, Yoga, nutritional education, health check-ups and immunisation program for children in the age group of 0-6 years.
Rajiv Gandhi Manav Seva Award was also given to leading the pediatric surgeon from Arunachal Pradesh, Moji Jini, who is the only such specialist in the border state. Rendering quality healthcare services especially to the children, he has also been engaged in various child welfare activities since 1988. He had performed many complicated surgeries of health services through conducting numerous health camps for children in remote areas.
In the individual organisation category, Udyan Care, Bangalore Oniyavara Seva Coota (BOSCO) and EHSMS (Friends of Street Children) Lucknow were awarded with the National Award for Child Welfare, 2014. Udayan Care, founded here 20 years ago, works for the care and protection of orphans and abandoned children. The organisation provides shelter to these children through their 13 ‘Udayan Ghars’ that have nurtured more than 518 children since they were first set up in 1996. It supports girl education through ‘Udayan Shalini Fellowship programme’ since 2002 to support the higher education for girls, and since then it has supported over 4,200 girls.
BOSCO was established in 1986 for children living on the street, child labourers, abandoned/orphan children, victims of drug abuse, victims of child abuse, begging children, rag pickers and children in conflict with law etc. EHSMS was established 13-year-ago and works towards re-integrating abandoned children in the mainstream society with dignity. It has reached out to approximately 5,000 children by safely restoring them to families, shelters, rendering nutrition, health, vocational training, de-addiction services or by providing support to families in crisis.
Image : PTI
Read More :
‘Slum Cricket League’ is opening doors of opportunity for children
‘Chota Masterji’ – an 11-year-old boy who teaches 100 village and slum kids daily in his ‘Bal Choupal’
One lakh children of Hyderabad are writing letters to employees asking them to use public transport
