Express press service
KADAPA: While he was desperately looking for a job, a few government officials not only steered him in the right direction, but provided moral and financial support to keep him on his feet. HV Siva Reddy, who now works as a cinematographer in films, started a street children’s shelter, which helped the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) campaign emerge as an urban residential hostel that transformed a large many of its residents into state and national level players of karate, wrestling and judo.
Siva’s father, Kesava, was a truck driver who went bankrupt after performing the weddings of his two daughters. Due to family financial difficulties, Siva skipped college after middle school in the early 2000s. He, however, took the help of his friends to train in computer hardware troubleshooting, which acted as a blessing in disguise for him. In 2003, Joshi Babu, then Deputy Collector of Pulivendula, had a problem with his official computer system and wanted to recover some deleted files. This was the time when computers were just beginning to be introduced into offices for regular operation.
The opportunity to help Joshi Babu fell in Siva’s lap and he managed to recover the lost files. Impressed by his talent, Joshi Babu then recommended him to associate collector Jayalakshmi for a job. Since Siva did not have a higher education degree, it was difficult to find him a suitable technical job. On the advice of Joshi Babu, Siva followed a distance learning course. After a series of odd jobs, Siva in 2012 started working in the film industry, and has been involved in several projects since. However, he never forgot his difficult childhood and opened a shelter in Siddavatam in 2009. In 2012, then District Collector Anil Kumar visited the shelter and suggested Siva to transfer it to Kadapa.
At her suggestion and with the help of the SSA, he opened a foster home and even provided staff salaries with SSA funds and part of his earnings. With the help of a certain Nagaraju and Ramachandra attached to the Child Welfare Committee, he took in street children, orphans and ragpickers. In December 2021, four students from the shelter won gold medals in a karate championship held in Hyderabad. Bairesh and Arun Kumar performed well in a Jit Kun Do contest in Delhi. Sangaraju Shivasai from Kadapa City, who lost his father, was brought to the shelter. He is a class 10 student and was recently selected to an under-16 hockey team.
Cultivate talent
In December 2021, four students form the gold medalists under cover during a karate championship held in Hyderabad. Bairesh and Arun Kumar performed well in a Jit Kun Do contest in Delhi. Sangaraju Shivasai, another resident, was recently selected for an under-16 hockey team
