A meeting of heroes

The Times of India, Chennai edition covered the story of Karan meeting the Tamil Cinestar Surya. IDF thank the Times of India team for their kind and continued support.

8-yr-old social worker has dream meeting with Suriya

Chennai : Rattling off a list of his favourite cartoons (Perman, Ninja Hattori, Shaun the Sheep), eight-year-old Karan Dravid seems like every other child his age. However, the desire to help those less fortunate than him has made Karan an inspiration to his peers and even landed him a meeting with popular Tamil actor Suriya on Wednesday.

“I had a lot of fun. He asked me how, at my age, I thought I could help underprivileged children. Actually, I became interested in this sort of work when volunteers from the Indian Development Foundation (IDF) made a presentation at my school about persons living with leprosy. After I became a member of the organisation, we were taken to B R Hills where I saw how tribal children lived. I came back to school and made an appeal to the students to donate old clothes,” Karan said.

Starting from here, he became responsible for Hewlett Packard providing 30 used computers to IDF after he had made an appeal in the Bangalore edition of TOI to IT firms to donate their old machines. “I visited Papad village in Rajasthan where I met children who had never seen a mirror before. When I came back, we arranged to send them computers, a few geometry boxes and mirrors,” Karan recounted.

It was his father Sai Premkumar, who introduced Karan to the every day struggles faced by underprivileged families. “He is an inspiration to his classmates. They want to learn something from him. I think when there is an interaction from one child to another, it makes a lot of difference,” Premkumar said.

Appointed the youngest brand ambassador of IDF, actor Suriya wished Karan the very best of luck, C Chidambaram, Southern Regional Manager, IDF, said. “He told Karan never to forget the work he has done so far and to keep going,” Chidambaram added.

TOI link
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JQ0gvMjAwOC8wNi8wNiNBcjAwNjAz&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Related stories.
http://indiandevelopmentfoundation.blogspot.com/2008/06/karan-meets-surya.html