UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday lauded the role being played by VidyaGyan in creating future leaders from the country’s rural heartland.
The chief minister visited the VidyaGyan Leadership Academy in Dulehra village in Bulandshahr district on Sunday to participate in a function to mark the completion of three years of VidyaGyan.
Mr Akhilesh Yadav also interacted with VidyaGyan students who also got an opportunity to quiz their chief minister on a variety of issues that ranged from his personal life, the insights on the importance of education and also on his role as chief minister of India’s most populous state. Mr Yadav also inaugurated a new science lab in the school.
Mr Yadav congratulated the Shiv Nadar Foundation and the students on the successful completion of 3 years of the VidyaGyan Leadership Academy.
“I see VidyaGyan not just as a school for the underprivileged, but a state-of-the-art leadership academy that addresses social imbalances and envisions nurturing and creating leaders who would be the inspiration and role models for their families, communities and society at large. As a replicable model, VidyaGyan can be a blueprint for Indian education because of a multiplier effect that it can have which will directly impact thousands and tens-of-thousands of lives over the long term and successfully help bridge the urban-rural divide,” he said.
Talking to reporters, Mr Shiv Nadar said that he was grateful to the chief minister for visiting VidyaGyan and spending time with the students.
VidyaGyan that caters mainly to talented students from rural areas, at present, has over 1200 students at two schools in Bulandshahr and Sitapur in UP. The Shiv Nadar Foundation plans to build three more VidyaGyan schools in Uttar Pradesh, which would finally have around 4200 students. The objective, however, is that these students would be ambassadors of the school and make changes in the communities they come from.