SPC, police join hands to set up study centres for tribal students

TV, D2H connection arranged to facilitate online education

When personnel from the Vithura police station and the Student Police Cadets (SPC) and teachers of Government Vocational and Higher Secondary School, Vithura, went to the Kalloopara tribal settlement during the first lockdown period as part of the ‘Oru Vayaroottam’ project to provide them food kits and medicines, more than food what the residents wanted was some facility for their children to study. A study room for 12 children was then arranged at the police station, but when the students informed the personnel of the difficulty to reach the station from the settlement, the police set out to see if a facility could be arranged in the settlement itself. Within five days, the parents of the children readied a temporary structure made of bamboo and reed. The police and the teachers then arranged facilities such as TV, D2H connection, whiteboard, marker and furniture for online education, besides providing study kits. When the ‘pallikoodam’ (learning centre) at Kalloopara took off, there was demand to set up a similar centre at the Kongamarathinmoodu settlement inside the forests near Kallar. The settlement lacks vehicular access. The police and the SPC joined hands to set up a centre there by the beginning of the second lockdown. The centre accommodates 17 students from the Kongamarathinmoodu and Mullamoodu settlements.