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My Work with SCEAD Foundation Bangalore

My Interview with Daniel 
Siju Thomas Daniel, Founder, SCEAD Foundation
 Daniel has been an inspiration to the many volunteers who have been lucky enough to work under him.
Tarshish Kurien with Daniel 
He has been a visionary from the beginning. The roots of social work began to grow from the early age of 17 when he and his fellow college mates took turns to work with a government school named Banjara Palya on the outskirts of Bangalore, often bunking classes. They drew up a schedule: with a fixed timetable of who would bunk when in order to seamlessly visit the school and teach the underprivileged children and reinforce the importance of education.
In a country such as India which has remained firmly behind other developed nations in spite of a huge wealth of natural resources and opportunities to innovate, Daniel’s SCEAD is paving the way for other such NGOs to continue their work and realise the dream of full literacy. India lags behind other countries so much that the dream of a 100% literate country has not yet been realised even a decade into the 21st century.

I managed to schedule an interview with Daniel to talk about the NGO and about its humble beginnings.

WHY DID YOU START SCEAD FOUNDATION?
“SCEAD started in 1998 when I was still a college student. The focus is on children who are not properly educated and who cannot alleviate their suffering and who do not even realise that their plight could be better. I initially began with my classmates in Banjara Palya School.
We had a timetable where each one of us would bunk college once in a week and go to the school. For example, on Mondays I would go, on Wednesdays was my friend’s turn, and on Saturday all of us would go together and campaign for the school.
Slowly they developed this willingness to serve and focused more on child education. In Daniel’s words, ‘The main aim was to get these kids from toil back to education.’ 

SCEAD has been able to execute projects on a larger scale than it did back in 1998 and has come a long way from a dream in the minds of a couple of college kids.
It has been an amazing experience working with SCEAD and also a great pleasure to meet a jovial and charismatic man such as Siju Thomas Daniel

Tarshish Kurien 
Christ University Bangalore 

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