Akal Academy Kajri, Niranjanpur, UP celebrated Teachers’ Day with lot of zest & fun activities. Dressed to the occasion, Specially attired Teachers and Staff of the school were welcomed by the students with flowers & bouquets. The children were eager and energetic to have some frolic moments with their Teachers.

Principal Mrs. Simran Kaur Thind alongside Teachers, paid floral tribute to Dr. Saravpalli S Radhakrishnan. Whilst several students showcased, beautifully designed placards in & outside the classrooms to make the occasion graceful, the senior wing of the school gave away title tags, amid cheerful ovation.

To add spark to the celebrations, certain students presented mimicry of their favorite Teachers that sent the Teachers into convulsive laughter. This light-hearted banter brought the creative elements into action. Later, an entertaining “Teachers’ Special” quiz between the ladies and the gents team kept the event ablaze.

Lastly, it was the ‘Tug of war’ organized between senior boys & gents teachers giving some fun-filled combat actions to everyone especially when the gents teachers towed the budding boys to the ground.

Finally Principal Mrs. Simran Kaur Thind, gave away tokens of appreciation lauding the Teachers for their hard work & dedication. She exhorted “Both Teachers & students should strive to preserve the cultural values pertaining to the traditional Guru-Shishya, Teacher-student relationship. I thank them for making the occasion memorable.”

~ Ramandeep Singh
~ New Delhi, 16th Sep ’13

Pics from recently held ‘Fancy Dress’ event held at Akal Academy, Rataolan where young little kids painted an ideal picture of original countryside ( i.e. Rural regions ). Their dresses & the thoughts behind represented the real charm of the village life that dark shadow of urbanization is draining out of them like a slow poison, killing quietly & softly, leaving the youth crippled at the hands of alcohol & drug abuse.
Through the eyes of these little, we briefly lived through the simple yet rich life of villages, the way the countrymen dreamt about it, the way it was originally meant to be.

~ Deeksha Singh
~ New delhi, 16th Sep ’13

Akal Academy Reeth Kheri, Patiala, 13 Sep ’13 – The Kalgidhar Trust, Baru Sahib has been transforming rural India through its 129 Akal Academies. Akal Academy, Reeth Kheri is a unique rural school wherein 476 students travel from Patiala City everyday for their education. It has always been a challenge for school management as well as staff to provide essential filtered clean drinking water because of the severe ground water problems of this area.

Punjab & Sind Bank, took this challenge up under their CSR initiative and sourced out Switzerland made precision ultra filtered drinking water compact machines with capacity of 500 litres. per hour. The students and the parents were quite overjoyed and enthusiastic to experience this positive change that has got them an access to fresh and clean drinking water. Such was the response that Akal Academy and PSB were requested to invite Mr. M.K Jain, Executive Director, PSB who has recently joined the bank; to inaugurate this much needed machine. Mr. M.K Jain kindly consented to inaugurate this machine at a short notice and was accompanied by Mr. I.S Bhatia, G.M, PSB and Mr. S.S Kalra, ZM, PSB, Patiala. Mr. J.S Dardi, Chairman Chardikala Group of publications and also a member, Press Council of India was the guest of honour.

The guests were welcomed by a sweet group of young girls from Akal Academy who sung ‘Su-Swagatam…’ for the pleasantly surprised guests. On this happy occasion, Mr. M.K Jain said that, “I am really surprised at the quality of education and the values being imparted to rural students through Akal Academy. I was amazed at the amount of technology like E classrooms, best lab facilities, language lab and ERP systems of the school. Water being the most essential requirement of every human being is extremely important for the physical and mental growth of young children. We specially chose this Swiss made machine keeping in mind the water table pollution of this area and the challenges of maintaining equipments in rural areas. PSB started in 1908 with the intention of doing yeoman’s social service across India and this CSR initiative is a humble step towards that.”

There were hundreds of parents who attended this gathering along with Mr. BS Ahluwalia, of Synergy Solar Pvt. Limited, the providers of the machine. The function ended with a nice and touching poem by a class 7 student about the necessity of water and society’s obligation towards it.

~ Deeksha Singh
~ New Delhi, 14th Sep ’13

ISBTI together with Akal Academy,village Ellenabad, located in district Sirsa, Haryana, recently organized a Blood Donation Camp at the village wherein several of the staff members alongside volunteers from The Kalgidhar Trust, worked together to collect blood from donors.

These camps powered by ISBTI, a National organization on Blood Transfusion Medicine & Blood Banking, also play a pivotal role in motivating donors alongside educating them about measures to take up in case of emergencies, especially in rural/village regions. Sirsa, being a backward district, often faces the challenges of shortage of blood, hence Akal Academy and ISBTI tied hands together to motivate locals and their own members to donate blood.

Blood donation is observed as an essential & critical element of serving humanity, by The Kalgidhar Trust; such Blood donation camps are regularly organized at Akal Academy campuses of all 129 rural schools located in far-flung villages like Ellenabad across North India.

“Every year our nation requires about 4 crore units of blood, out of which only a meager 40 Lakh units of blood is available.” Kalgidhar Trust does its bit. Do you?

~ Karanpreet Singh
~ New Delhi, 12th Sep ’13

At age as young as 4, little rural kids of small village Ghugg in Jalandhar district demonstrated their English spelling abilityat try-outs held within the school.

In a spelling contest named ‘Spell-bee’, teams were setup into 4 houses i.e.  Ajay, Abhay, Amul & Atul House, two kids were paired in each house;they  were thrown a volley of words where the first one to correctly spell the given word would gain a point.

Team Abhay Houses weep the board in round one for Spell-Bee with a splendid 45 point score followed by Amul, Atulat 2^nd& 3^rd  with  decent 42 & 40 whilst Ajay House took the weak spot with only 30.

Round 2 saw an incredible comeback by Ajay House, moving 2 steps up from its last position to becoming the 2^nd fastest Spell-beewith final score of 44, whilst House Amul won the title of be the Fastest Spell-bee of the Academy by maintaining its consistent scoring through the second round where House Abhay took all the bashing, crashing all the way from top to finish the last as House Atul managed to retain its 3^rd position of round one by being quickest at the final two questions.

The winners alongside the participants were presented with different prizes; the event witnessed a great sportsmanship coming forth from these young rural kids who looked perfect future challengers for mainstream competitions.

~ Ramandeep Singh,
~ New Delhi, 11th Sep ’13

In today’s Super Story in on going Special Week on ‘#PositiveInspirations’ across Akal Academies, which have made it Super Big, we are covering the story of a ‘Born Tough’ army man in the making; Yuvraj Singh. He has currently been recruited as a CADET at NDA (National Defence Academy) for a specialized 5 yr. Army training in Kharagwasla, Pune.

Scoring an A-1 in all his subjects, Yuvraj Singh, 17, after his 10+2, was determinedly prepared & cracked his way through the most diversely competitive & tough NDA (National Defence Academy) entrance examination. Out of the more than two lakh candidates that appeared in NDA, Yuvraj shined bright, securing an All India Rank–18 and interestingly, he also cleared Indian Navy entrance.

His success is being seen as highly commendable for a village boy from Gomti, especially competition being amongst candidates coming from reputed Army & Public schools of the cities.

Yuvraj Singh, an inhabitant from village Gomti was born to Mr. Ashok Kumar and Mrs. Hemlata, who originally came from Punjab, but moved to the village with their little Yuvraj to work for a noble cause of Rural Education at Akal Academy since 1998, as Teachers.
Then it was at Akal Academy where the parents decided to bring up his education alongside other kids, where Mr. Kumar teaches English as a Senior Secondary Teacher, while his wife taught Social Science until she was promoted & transferred to Akal Academy, Kajri recently as the Principal.

Yuvraj’s preparations to enter army, roots back to his childhood days at school when his father along side his job, started influencing, training & mentoring him with the dynamics of Army& its entrance exam requirements. He tried preparing him onto following the cult tradition, which their family has patronized for years.

It was revealed that this was the biggest & the only challenge that Yuvraj grew up with, which not only bore the load of living up to the expectations of his Dad, butthe hopes of entire family chain itself. In fact, his Dad himself trained for the Army but could not get a chance to serve due to some medical issues & was offered to serve Police Force at Indo-Tibet border before he decided to join Akal Academy so he could prepare his son Yuvraj Singh to achieve the dream for him.

At this rural School, the well-made timetable and quality education helped Yuvraj to not only march his way through academics all by himself, but also to maintain his upkeep at almost every sports activity. He accepted all challenges whilst also keeping his affinity to writing articles in an evolving editorial mode; many of his writings have been regularly published in ‘Competition Success’, a widely popular monthly magazine.

At present,Yuvraj is invariably engaged with his training under NDA’s strict regime; unaware & undisturbed about the happenings of the normal world, having absolute isolation & zero connection to the outside world. For the matter of fact, cadets under training have no permission to keep mobile phones or using internet and even the TV sets are not provided. As for traveling purposes,it’s no worldly vehicles or motorbikes, but the Army cycles. Unlike soldiers, Yuvraj too, no matter how young he is;rules bear no exception for him; he is only permitted to visit or see his family only during vacations!

We, members of Akal Academy & the Kalgidhar Trust, Baru Sahib team, sincerely thank Mr. Ashok Kumar (Yuvi’s Father) for providing us with all the inputs about Yuvraj’sjourney.

We extend our gratitude to Yuvraj’s parents forthe benevolence, the courage &the determinationwith which they have been consistently serving the society and bringing up a child so bright,who’s all set to serve the entire nation.

Aspirations are many, Inspirations are some!LieutenantYuvraj Singh, you make us proud!

In your small way you too can help more rural students to come up and do India Proud – Click www.DeedaDay.in

~ Ramandeep Singh,
~ New Delhi, 11th Sep ’13

Reports about massive celebrations across different Akal Academies on the occasion of Pratham Prakash Utsav of  Sri Guru Granth Sahib kept coming in all through the last week.

Akal Academy, Village Ellenabad, celebrated this day with full gusto, where young students coming from classes 2^nd to 5^th devoutly prepared and performed Kirtan, Kavitas, Dharmic Choreography, Dharmic Geets to contribute towards the celebrations at the school. Fifteen Akhand Path Sahibs were observed at the Academy and its Samapti Bhog happened on the same day. It’s incredible to find so much enthusiasm prevailing among the young rural kids of villages, which was unimaginable, thanks to the efforts of Principal Sukhjeet Kaur who was personally looking after all details.

Reverence for these young kids & their serene spirit!

~ Deeksha Singh,
~ New Delhi, 10th Sep ’13