Pankaj Singh, Member of Legislative Assembly, NOIDA, felicitates students during his visit to VidyaGyan Leadership Academy, Bulandshahr

VidyaGyan, a leadership academy for meritorious and economically underprivileged students from rural Uttar Pradesh on Monday hosted Pankaj Singh, the Member of Legislative Assembly, NOIDA at its Bulandshahr campus.

During the visit to the school, Singh participated in a live interaction with the students and also felicitated student achievers, in the fields of arts and sports.

An initiative of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, VidyaGyan was established in 2009 to select and nurture potential high achievers from rural Uttar Pradesh and provide them with a platform to excel in whatever field they choose. Over the years, the VidyaGyan students have emerged on the top across scholastic and co-scholastic fields at both the State and National levels.

"I am delighted to be at VidyaGyan today and for this opportunity to interact with the immensely talented group of students at the School. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state of our country and education models like VidyaGyan show that there are bright sparks even in the remotest corners of our State, regardless of gender and economic background, who are only waiting to be discovered and nurtured. I am truly impressed to see the efforts at VidyaGyan, led by Roshni Nadar Malhotra, to help transform these underprivileged children into change-agents for tomorrow," said Singh.

"We are honored to have Shri Pankaj Singh, Member of Legislative Assembly, NOIDA here with us to address and interact with our students. VidyaGyan is our effort to develop future leaders from rural UP who will uplift their families, communities, villages and the nation at large. Interaction with and exposure to national and international leaders is an important part of our efforts to enable our students in broadening their horizons and I am confident that our students would have gained immensely from their interaction with Pankaj Singh today," added Malhotra.

Currently, close to 1900 students study at the two campuses of VidyaGyan, located in Bulandshahr and Sitapur. Every year VidyaGyan undertakes an intensive and rigorous selection process to identify 200 students from over 1,50,000 belonging to families with an annual income of less than Rs. 1 lakh. For this process, the Academy has signed a MoU with the Uttar Pradesh Government to conduct the selection process covering all 75 districts of the State.

The selected students are given the best residential education with world-class infrastructure facilities, absolutely free of cost. The Academy focuses on the all-round development of these students and invests in several programmes as part curricular and co-curricular activities. VidyaGyan regularly invites luminaries from every field to provide the right motivation and inspiration to its students.