Collectors' Super 100, TVM's heroic scheme to empower poor girls, enter second year

The second phase of 'Collectors' Super 100', which provides special training to poor coastal and tribal girl students in the capital district, was inaugurated in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday, July 26. 'Collectors' Super 100' takes its name from the popular Hrithik Roshan starrer 'Super 30' about a driven mathematician, Annad Kumar, who helps poor students crack JEE Advanced.

In Super 30, Hrithik's character coaches 30 poor students. 'Collectors' Super 100' is far more ambitious. It picks 100 high school and higher seondary school girls from poor coastal and tribal families in the capital district and trains them to develop an abiding interest in 'STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics)'-related subjects. The project is jointly organised by the Thiruvananthapuram District Administration and the NGO Kanal.

For the second phase, 48 girls studying in ninth and 11th standards in government schools have been selected. 52 students who remain from the first batch, all of them now in 12th standard, are also part of the 'Collectors' Super 100' project. Together they make 100, 50 from the coast and 50 from tribal communities. This number will be sustained in the coming years.

Last year, when the project debuted, 100 girls from four classes - 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th - were picked after a preliminary screening of over 500 students from the coastal and tribal regions of Thiruvananthapuram. "From this year on, we need to induct only students from the 9th and 11th standards. The 9th and 11th standard students we selected last year are now in 10th and 12th," said P D Anson Alexander, the director of Kanal.

This time, too, there were hundreds of applicants. An entrance test was conducted. For ninth standard students, the questions were based on what they studied in the eighth standard. For 11th standard students, the entrance questions were from their 10th standard textbooks. "This project is to empower kids from economically distressed families but we also pick the brightest among them," Anson said. In addition to the entrance test, there was also an interview and group discussion.

Thiruvananthapuram collector Anukumari inaugurated the second phase at Ayyankali Hall in Thiruvananthapuram. The keynote address was delivered by Geromic George, the director of Backward Classes Welfare Development Department and former Thiruvananthapuram collector. 'Collectors' Super 100' is Geromic George's brainchild.

"It was born out of the former collector's realisation that even reserved seats in science courses in our universities were not being filled. Some irrational fear was keeping poor kids from taking up science subjects. It was to address this that George sir came up with the 'Collectors' Super 100' concept when he was the Collector," said Anson.

Girls from poor families do take up science but only as a means to get jobs. Nursing and lab assistant courses, for instance. Super 100 wants to nudge the girls to think bigger.

Super 100 has five segments. One, foundation. The chosen students will be given a refresher course on all the fundamental concepts in science, from Newton's Law to entropy, all that they were taught in the lower classes. Two, special coaching to improve their uptake of the existing syllabus, of what they are taught daily in their classrooms.

Three, exposure visits or field visits. Anson calls this the most important component of Super 100. "We will take the girls to major scientific and public institutions like the airport, IISER, Technopark, and tertiery care centres like the Sri Chithira Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology and arrange interactions for them with the top people in these organisations. This will give the students a mind-opener on how these orgaisations function and how important they are. This way we hope to reset their aspirational levels," Anson said.

Four, psychosocial interventions like counselling, if required, will be made. And five, students interested in engineering and medicine will be given JEE and NEET coaching. Last year, though no one was interested in medicine, 20 sat for NEET and nine cleared the test. "There was a sudden realisation that they too could score good ranks, that a competitive test like the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) they thought was beyond them was actually within their grasps. All except one have decided to repeat," Anson said.

Super 100 has tie-ups with entrance coaching centres like Brilliant and Zephyr. "They will provide free training to our students. Repeaters will be out of the Super 100 project but still they would be given a 70% discount," Anson said. Super 100 will get Rs 10 lakh a year from the CSR funds of Cochin Shipyard.