a. Please write on a topic that is of importance to you, and reflects who you are.

(Maximum 500
words)

While I was attending a marriage function at our ancestral town few years back, I found the entire
experience a bit odd. The arrangements were poor, most people were raw and uneducated, and even
basic hygiene was missing. That is when I asked my father, “How come there is such a stark contrast
in our living standards, even though we share the same roots?” My father explained to me how his
grandfather, being the first graduate in his village, changed the course of his progeny by his single-
minded focus on education. It took me time to digest that just one individual’s focus on education
could bring about such a miraculous difference. This was the first time I realized the true value of
education.

That incident ignited a passion in me to contribute in the area of education at my ancestral town. I got
associated with an NGO in the town, which runs a secondary school for disadvantaged children. I
was shocked to see the huge disparity in the educational standards. The school had shabby rooms
filled with students who were more in number than their books and no one seem interested in what
was being taught by the teacher. Being an avid user of resources like Khan Academy and You-tube, I
felt that computers and Internet access could do wonders in the lives of these people. I therefore
volunteered to set up a free computer-training center in the school with support from ST Foundation. It
was a satisfying experience for me. I was amazed to note the ease with which children established
comfort with computers and how Internet literacy opened a world of opportunities for them.

In the subsequent years, I volunteered for our school’s Seva Program and an NGO called ‘Books for
All’ where I taught English and Math to under privileged children in my neighborhood. This experience
turned out to be an eye-opener for me as it made me understand the significant gap in English
Literacy in India. None of the children that I was teaching had even basic understanding of English. I
felt that the problem lay in the way English was being taught in such schools. There was a lack of
good teachers. Also, most of the conventional resources available to learn English were in English
language itself.

My strong belief in eLearning and passion to contribute in the field of education, motivated me
towards creating an eLearning website called www.englishvinglish.org. The website provides free
video based lesson plans, exercises and vocabulary sections for learning English in Hindi, the
vernacular language. The website has received positive reviews from its potential audience and so I
plan to gradually make this website an effective medium for learning English in all leading languages
of India.

My experiences have made me strongly believe that education and technology can be used
effectively to empower people and solve lot of complex problems that the world is facing today. I feel
that what my great-grandfather did to our family, technology based education could do to millions of
lives.