Press release

Ambedkar Scholarships project was started in 2003 with just 2 scholarships by Benjamin Paul Kaila, a native of Tenali in AP now working in US as a software professional and Devdas Adidela of Hyderabad.

The primary goal of this simple project is to encourage dalit students from economically backward families who just entered college with a good academic standing in SSC (10^th class) to perform well in future with inspiration, to plant the seeds of the message of Dr Ambedkar in these young and dynamic minds at a very early stage, and to make them aware of the issues related to Dalits. All these students should come only from Government (no private) schools. At present, this project is constrained to AP due to lack of resources – both human and financial. The secondary objective is to bring social sense among the successful Dalits in India and abroad to pay back to the society in a small way by supporting one or more scholarships. Imagine if every dalit professional or business man supports one scholarship each, how many dalit children can get inspired? If 1% of these students become successful and thankful to the society who recognized them at a very crucial stage in their life, imagine the impact of it on society?

Non Dalits are also welcomed to participate in the project as donors. In fact, we have quite a few of them at present. But the target donors are mainly successful Dalits as it is their responsibility to help the needy among them. HELP YOURSELF FIRST and ASK FROM OTHERS LATER is the message this project wants to convey to these successful and well-to-do Dalits. How can you ask others to help you and your society when you do nothing though you are capable of doing it?

These scholarships go directly to the beneficiary and named after a person of donor’s choice. The idea of supplying books and/or reimbursing the necessary tuition and special coaching fees is still not materialized due to resource constraints.

We disbursed 24 scholarships in 2004 and planning to disburse 36 in 2005 in a very simple function on January 13, 2006 in Hyderabad, thanks to many successful professionals from all over the globe and from all walks of life. Each scholarship consists of Rs:5,000, a biography of Dr Ambedkar and a Certificate of Achievement apart from other books sponsored by individuals.

Pilli Viajayavardhan of Hyderbad joined the project in 2004 and was responsible for corresponding with hundreds of schools in AP, students, others in the mailing list and proof reading and printing of several documents spending several hours on this work. All the people involved in this project are volunteers working just with an intention of helping their budding fellow brothers and sisters with a hope that one or two among these students will come up in life and pay back to the society in a big way. Who knows how many Ambedkars on making are there among them? Who knows what would have happened to Dr Ambedkar had he not felicitated and encouraged after he was successful in his Metric by a few of his own people?

Others who are constant encouragement to this project include people like Mr Ramakrishna Bhupathi of California, Dr Berwa of Maryland, Mr Shiva Shankar of Madras, to name a few.

The project is being run with complete transparency posting every detail of it on the website. The donors are updated very frequently through the electronic mailing list designed exclusively for this purpose. Every donor has a say in running the project and the ideas will be implemented depending on the feasibility and ease of execution due to resource constraints.

If anyone is interested to learn more about our project, we request you to visit our website www.ambedkarscholarship.org or contact us at ambedkarscholarship@yahoo.com.