Malayalam Mission opens a new centre on OMR

An IT professional spearheads initiative to teach Malayalam to residents of the area

Software professional Anupama Amanangad will start donning the teacher’s hat from January 19 when she would receive students at her home in Bollineni Hillside, a gated community. They would be there for easy-to-learn lessons in Malayalam.

On January 5, the latest centre of the Malayalam Mission, a project of the Kerala government to teach non-resident Malayalees the mother tongue, was inaugurated at an event held at the park inside Bollineni Hillside in Semmancherry.

Keen that her daughter join Malayalam classes before her eighth birthday, Anupama stumbled upon this initiative where the classes are absolutely free and the teachers work on a voluntary basis.

She was inspired by the training programme she attended with 40 others to become a voluntary teacher. Later, Anupama decided to extend her love for the language to others in the neighbourhood.

“There is no fun teaching my daughter alone, so I thought: why not get some of my friends in the community as well? And that is how I got entrusted with managing the activities of this centre,” says Anupama, who studied in a Malayalam medium school at Malapuram district and is a resident of Semmancherry for the last 10 years.

The centre has already received a heartening response: 18 have signed up for the weekly classes and this includes a family of three and three seniors citizens.

The new centre is hoping to attract more Malayalees working in this part of the city, a majority of them employed in the IT and ITeS sector. “BHAMA (Bollineni Hillside Association of Malayalees) is a close-knit group that meets for special occasions including festivals such as Onam and Vishu and many of those who enrolled for this programme got to know about it from the posts shared in this online community,” she says.

Malayalam Mission has been running classes in the city, since 2011, at homes of residents, association offices, parks, temples, churches and mosques.

“Currently Malayalam Mission has 196 centres in the city, with a majority of them being managed by homemakers trained to teach the language in an easy to learn way,” says P.R. Smitha, Tamil Nadu convenor of Mayalayam Mission.

These centres have students ranging from ages 10 to 90. “Our Ayanavaram centre which is run in a church currently has 93 students across age groups,” says Smitha teacher, adding that the Palavakkam centre is opening on January 26.

For details about the classes, call Smitha at 9544151820.

Published - January 11, 2025 06:38 pm IST