Dattubhai Marathe retired in 2013 as a primary teacher and felt the need of giving a new direction to his life. He spent two years in drafting his plans and penning down all his life experiences. During this time, he noticed many youngsters and even children being addicted to tobacco, smoking, alcohol, and drugs. He, in no time, decided to help the young drug addicts to overcome their addiction to abusive substances.
He held his first session related to the anti-abusive substance program in a school in 2015. Singing and storytelling were the two foundation principles for this program as he wanted to have an entertainment-based approach to reach out to as many children as possible. He saw a great emotional impact on the children at the end of his first session. They were now thoughtful and considerate of their future. Seeing the effectiveness of the program, he decided to take it forward and hence visited many places to conduct similar sessions.
So far, he has visited 480 schools and colleges. He has spent his entire life pension for traveling to places like Surat, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, and Navasari to do this program. He managed to get support from his family and others as well.
He was awarded ‘Samaj Bhushan Puraskar’ in 2019 by Pandharpur of Maharashtra state for his work. Some of his articles related to environmental issues were published in the local newspaper.
At the age of 66, he decided to persuade at least one person to stay away from abusive substances, even in the fatal lockdown period. As a result, he pulled out 60 people from addiction during this time. “Young people are a real asset for this nation. So I wish to preserve them”, says Dattubhai.
Story by: Haridas Patil
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Haridas Patil is an M.A.Bed in English literature with 9 years of experience in the field. He is known as a teacher of activities and always brings new activity to the class. He invokes enthusiasm about learning in his student. He brings small ice breakers, moral stories, and energizers to class. So the learners keep remembering the lesson. He writes in English every day including daily reflection, article, and story, etc. Recently, he completed three stories. He is a teacher of a mission with a vision. He believes in innovative and creative teaching. He keeps a principle of ‘Reflect, Plan, and Act’ in the teaching. He likes to have feedback from the students and others. He points out, “learning and happiness should go together.” At the end of the day he says, "I am very fortunate to be a teacher and a backbone of Shree Satya Sai Vidya Niketan family, for it is a shrine of happiness and learning” Nowadays he started a project on 1) Communication: access to power, 2) Communication: to create to future.
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