Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards Honor Satya Bharti Students for Community Development Campaigns

 INDIACSR Correspondent

NEW DELHI:  Bharti Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises, today announced that the community development initiatives of students from five different Satya Bharti Schools, have been chosen for the 2013 Pramerica Spirit of Community awards, an annual recognition programme for volunteer community service. The community campaigns started by five Satya Bharti students won one silver and four bronze medals.

DLF Pramerica received more than 4000 applications this year from across the country. Of these, 24 applicants were from Satya Bharti Schools. Arti Verma, a class VII student from Satya Bharti School Raiwana, Neemrana made it to the top 15 winners. She was recognized for her campaign to change the attitude of her community against untouchability. Her courage and effort was applauded through the award.

The class VIII students from various Satya Bharti Schools who won the runner-up awards and bagged four bronze medals were – Sapna Chauhan for her initiative against child marriage, Shilpa Kumar’s campaign to help the village elderly, Priyanka Kumari for her work to provide assistance to abandoned women and Rekha Meena for her drive against eve-teasing.

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Commenting on the occasion Mr. Vijay Chadda, CEO, Bharti Foundation said that it is indeed a matter of great pride that for the third consecutive year students from Satya Bharti Schools have won accolades in the Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards for their initiatives in community development. Despite belonging to economically disadvantaged backgrounds, our children have proved that giving back to society is not an exclusive preserve of the privileged and we can all contribute as part of our ‘Individual Responsibility’. This is in-line with our aim to develop all children to become responsible, educated and self reliant individuals with a deep sense of commitment to our Nation. He said, I would like to congratulate all the award winners as also each one who participated.

Bharti Foundation was set up in 2000 as the philanthropic arm of the Bharti Group of Companies to help bridge the education divide between urban and rural India. Towards achieving this intent, the Foundation launched its flagship initiative, the Satya Bharti School Program in 2006. The program delivers quality education, free of cost, to underprivileged children in the villages of India, focusing primarily on the girl child, and is helping transform students into well educated, confident, employable and socially responsible citizens.

Currently, more than 37,709 children are enrolled in 254 Satya Bharti Schools (including 187 primary, 62 elementary and five senior secondary schools) across six Indian states. The intent of the program is to develop scalable, sustainable and replicable components of quality education to make a large scale impact on the education sector as a whole.

The Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards (SOCA) is a school-level recognition programme for volunteer community service. The objective of this programme is to encourage the efforts of school children currently engaged in voluntary community or social service and hold them up as role models for all young Indians. The programme is an extension of the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, the largest youth recognition programme in the United States, which Prudential Financial, Inc. (PFI) has been conducting for the last 17 years to identify the country’s top student volunteers. The programme was introduced in India in 2010. In the last two years, over 8000 students across 400 schools have participated in this initiative.