During the Saturday evening press meet, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan spoke fondly of a schoolboy who has been sending money to the CM’s Disaster Relief Fund (CMDRF) every month for the last four years. The boy met CM Pinarayi in 2018 to present a project through which money could be collected from every school in Kerala and sent to the CMDRF.
The CM was mentioning the incident of a section of people burning a government order about salary cuts to meet COVID-19 expenses. While sounding upset about the incident, he recalled the boy – Adersh RA of Vlathankara, Thiruvananthapuram — and his monthly donations.
Adersh, now in high school, going to class X next year, heard it on the TV.
“I had begun sending whatever pocket money I got to the CMDRF every month since I was in class V and the Puttingal fire tragedy happened,” Adersh tells TNM.
It was a school vacation then. An explosion had taken place and the fire in the Puttingal temple in Kollam spread to the neighbourhood, killing more than a hundred people, injuring many more. Several houses got destroyed too.
Young Adersh heard on the news that the Chief Minister gave orders to the Kollam Collector to take money out of the CMDRF. He asked his parents what the CMDRF is, and studied it. The 10-year-old decided to send whatever little pocket money he could to the CMDRF every month through the post office.
A practice he has not broken in four years.
In 2018, Adersh went a step ahead and presented a project called Money Box through which collections can be made through boxes kept in every school in Kerala. “It was then a presentation and was implemented on a trial basis for four days in September 2019. In four days, the schools in Kerala collected an amount of Rs 2.81 crore which was then sent to the CMDRF by the individual schools,” Adersh says.
He got his name in the Best India Records for 'Heroic Feats'. It calls him 'Unique Moneybox project pioneer'.
"Not only did his idea help in rebuilding the state after the devastating flood of 2018 but also in nurturing a sense of social commitment among students," the certificate says.
Adersh hopes that the schools have continued the practice of keeping the money box and collecting the funds to be sent to the CMDRF at the end of the academic year. He knows his school has maintained it. He had given a small lecture at his school assembly on how it works.