Since my childhood, I was always bothered about the problems we had in our society. I always wondered why there was nobody to solve such problems. Everyday I asked this same question to myself until I visited a school for blind girls, where I met Mona, an 11 year old blind girl, who told me that I am the most beautiful girl she had ever met. After being called – the most beautiful girl by a blind girl, I started thinking about people who always made fun of my dark complexion. This made me realize not only that beauty lies in the eyes of beholder but also that only the blind are capable of seeing inner beauty of a person. Since then, I started educating such special children. I also started observing social problems to find out the root cause. I learned that lack of proper education is the root cause of most problems in our society.
The passion for educating children helped me to start Shiksha, an initiative to educate poor children. I founded it in 2016, the first class of which had only 37 students, now has grown to a family of such 200 children. Selection of Madhvi (one of our brilliant students) by Sports Authority of India is a contribution in one of the latest achievements of Shiksha.
-Payal Rai (Founder of Shiksha)