Film showcases Kotak Mahindra’s CSR initiative for kids who lost breadwinner to Covid

The pandemic took many things from many people. For some children, it took the one thing their lives depended on. A parent. The sole breadwinner. A lot of these children were bright. Hard-working. On the edge of becoming something. And just as easily, on the edge of losing their education altogether.

Kotak Mahindra Group’s CSR arm, the Kotak Education Foundation, stepped in with something rare. Long vision. They created a scholarship called Kotak Shiksha Nidhi. Not a one-time help. A promise. About 1,800 children across the country would be supported all the way till graduation. The last of them will probably finish around 2030.

Some of those children are already engineers. Doctors. Young entrepreneurs. Lives that didn’t collapse. Lives that quietly turned.

Salt Inc was commissioned to make a film on this project. “Kotak Education Foundation wanted a testimonial film. We felt otherwise. We pushed for a documentary. One that breathes. One that listens. Goes deeper. We travelled across the country with a small crew. Met some of the beneficiaries of the scholarship in their own spaces. With their families. Just to understand what this scholarship meant to them,” stated a press note.

“Every family we met carried two emotions in the same breath. Grief that never really leaves. And resilience that somehow shows up anyway. There were tears. Often ours too. But there was also an overwhelming sense of dignity. Of hope that had been held, not handed out,” stated Salt in the note.

“The film is out now. We are grateful to have been given an opportunity to take a close look at that rare interface in human life where despair transforms into hope,” it mentioned.