“Water surrounds the lotus flower, but does not wet its petals”, said Gautam Buddha. Likewise,tones the life of DasmotiKope, an 18 years poor but vibrant girl of Khairapally village of Nayakguda GP under Mathiliblockof Malkangiri district.Dasmoti’s poverty ridden family has been enrolled as sponsored familysince 2007-08 by CYSD with the support of Childfund India. But, the dices of destiny turned and the family was pushed into a different reality after 5 years. When Dasmoti was about 10 years, her father, the only earning member, left the family and settled elsewhere leaving both his wife &only daughter. Dasmoti’s mother struggled hard to earn the livelihood forher family. Even after long battle for survival, her mother never decided to disrupt daughter’s education. Dasmotiwas determined to build her career brighterwith good education.The continuous moral and mental support through project based child club meeting, adolescents meeting and different leadership activitiesinspired her a lot.

During this lock down and closure of schools, Dasmotivolunteered to support the children of her village byimparting educationkeeping in mind the COVID-19 related advisories. Looking at her interest, CYSD programme team guided her to conduct the classes with innovative methods for easy learning of children. She followed indoor creative learning process to develop the cognitive knowledge level of children. For her volunteering work, shewas supported with remuneration fromthe project.  Dasmoti decided to do cultivation of their small farm land, with her hard earned money. She hired a tractor for ploughing the field and bought paddy seed to sow with the saved money.

Apart from this,Dasmoti has always championed for different causes of the village like, taking lead role for campaigning against early child marriage, performing peer educator for adolescent health care and proclaiming child rights & protection.

Dasmoti has been dreaming to stand by her own and support her mother for rest of the life.With this vision shecompleted her +2 in Science education but the shadow of grapple has yet to escape her. After +2 Sc. she could not take admission for pursuingBSc degreelast year, but she is in the process of getting admission in a college this year. Life for Dasmoti is a long struggle in the dark, yet she strives to overcome it.