A good student with a brilliant academic background had earned a scholarship to study abroad. However, owing to poor financial conditions, his trip seemed to be in jeopardy.

A citizen came to know about the plight of the poor student and pitched in to help. A group of such like-minded citizens were able to collect Rs 4 lakhs and helped the deserving student realize his dream of studying abroad.

A Brilliant Student

Rahul Chaure, the son of a waiter in a beer shop in Nagpur couldn’t attend regular college. Therefore, he completed his graduation from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). He had a brilliant academic record which helped him get the state government's fellowship for pursuing Master's in Clinical Psychology from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. It was like a dream come true for Rahul, but there was a big hurdle- he didn’t have funds to buy the air ticket, pay his visa fee and arrange for a month's accommodation till the government released funds.

Crowdfunding

When a group of citizens came to know about Rahul’s helplessness, they all started a drive to collect funds for Rahul. Umakant Kambe, who works in a private company said that they reached out to all contacts and friends and started building a small pool of funds. A women’s self-help group, a forest officer, an aviation officer and many individuals contributed in their capacity ranging from Rs1,000 to Rs25,000 each. Entrepreneur Hemant Sutey sponsored the entire visa fee of Rs 86,000 and executive engineer Vijay Gawande took a loan of Rs 76,000 for Rahul.

Kamble said that Rahul had applied for the state government's SC/ST scholarship for foreign education and once that money is released it will be returned to the contributors.

The joint efforts of all the citizens ensured that Rahul didn’t miss the flight to Aberdeen. It is really heartening to know about the efforts of society to help a student of abject poverty to overcome his hurdles and realize his dream.