A Ray of Hope if You Dare to Dream Big

A former economist from India’s financial capital is waging a tough battle to make quality education accessible to underprivileged children, that too in a very remote area…

- Shiphony Pavithran Suri

In 2002, Ankit Naudiyal’s fam-ily migrated from Pauri Garhwal to Purkal village in Dehradun. His father found a helper’s job in some shop, and mother as cook in a school operating in a rented cattle shed for the underprivileged. The founder of the school G.K Swamy roped her son into the school. After putting his heart and soul into academics, the boy later joined DIT for a BSc course in IT. Today he works as Senior Systems Engineer at Infosys. Naudiyals are grateful to the school and Ankit now funds the education of a needy child while his mother continues to cook at the school.

Ankit’s success story is not an isolated one. Several stories from a porter’s daughter who became a graduate teacher, and from street children graduating to B.Tech students bear testimony to the prosperity that Purkal Youth Development Society, in short PYDS school, has brought to the underprivileged society of hilly Purkal.

From a cattle shed to a full-fledged school

In 1998, G K Swamy, a retired economist from Mumbai, tagged his wife Chinni along to resettle at Purkal, a village nestled on the outskirts of Dehradun. An acute diabetic, and tired of city life, Swami intended to live in harmony with nature, and serve the youth of Purkal and nearby villages. To help the rural community gain access to quality education, he started off by giving free tuitions to four local kids after their school hours. “We had to give them remedial help to make them competent to join good schools,” says the 80-year old philanthropist.