Ambitious programmes are often triggered by an external factor. In the case of the Round Table’s ‘Freedom through education programme,’ the project was inspired by the success of Rotary’s Pulse Polio campaign.

“It was Rotary’s successful Pulse Polio campaign that triggered the education programme,” says Mr. Eshwaran.

“When we began in 1999, 60 million children had not been to school. Ever since, RTI has sent five lakh students to school though it had aimed for one million children by 2008.”

“The first few years were a period of learning for us.” RTI built a few hundred classrooms in the first few years.

The last three years have been even more hectic: the numbers have grown to 1,000 schools and 4,500 classrooms at an investment of Rs.75 crore.

Mr. Eshwaran says that building facilities at such a fast pace was a challenging task.

“In the last three years we have built 1,500 classrooms every year. Sometimes it is as much as five classrooms a day. Every rupee we raise goes for the buildings. We have tied up with governments in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to build schools under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan scheme.”

But the work does not stop with just building classrooms and toilets. RTI has now set targets to improve the quality of education. “Good teachers mean good results. We tied up with Edurite, a private organisation, to design software compatible to local language schools. We have provided schools with a computer, a projector and software and have a comprehensive three-year agreement with Edurite to maintain the software. Visual learning tools have been given to 100 schools. In the past four months of testing the tool, we have seen the dropout rate fall by 40 to 70 per cent.”

In Chennai, Vivekananda Vidyalaya School has been a beneficiary.

Round Table has targeted 1,000 classrooms this year at a cost of Rs.25 crore to benefit over six lakh children. They have partnered with the Rotary and the Azim Premji Foundation in Karnataka. In Hyderabad they are looking to maintain 811 classrooms in municipalities.

Mr. Eshwaran is excited about the support from Europe. “The Association of Round Table Netherlands has adopted our national project over the last two years and the Round Table of Great Britain and Ireland will also be our partners for a further period of three years. We are a pan-Indian organisation of young men in the age group of 18 to 40. Though we have retired our people at the age of 40, our passion as Round Tablers continues.”

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