Community College Initiative Program helps rural girls pursue education abroad

Rajendranagar: Think big even if you have least available sources to shape your dreams. This will help you to improve things better and add more than one arrow in the quiver to hit the target of success in the future.

However, only few could move this way on which fortune finally smiles. A live example to this adage is evident in a few talented but impoverished kids hailing from the sleepy village of Shamshabad as well as the remote hamlets of Rajam in Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh.

Thanks to the Community College Initiative Program (CCIP) of the United States, which supports students from developing countries to undergo a 10-month long non-degree course in a specified field of study in the US and GMR Varalakshmi Foundation (GMRVF), a CSR arm of GMR Group, niche education in the US is no more a far cry.

According to Meena Raghunathan, Executive Director-CSR, GMRVF, the foundation one of the four partners of US Consulate Hyderabad for selection of candidates for the CCIP programme. "GMRVF is playing a vital role in facilitating the students from Sri GCSR College, Rajam and Vocational trainees from Hyderabad to undergo one-year study at different Community Colleges in USA," she said.

Starting in 2015, so far, GMRVF has facilitated admissions of eight talented students till 2019 under the CCIP program in USA. Seven of them belong to from Rajam and 1 to Hyderabad. The students, who returned from the US, are either pursuing further studies or settled in jobs. GMRVF is also helping the interested candidates in identifying and applying for suitable jobs.

Commenting on this initiative, Meena Raghunathan, Executive Director-CSR, GMRVF, said, "We are happy to note that our students from GMRVF institutes are breaking barriers and making a mark for themselves on the global canvas of learning."