Catholic Bishops in Tamil Nadu have started an online program to provide career guidance to Dalit students in the southern Indian State.
Although the Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council have conducted many career guidance programs in the past this is the first online career guidance program for Dalit Christians, said Bishop P. Thomas Paulsamy of Dindigul while launching the program on July 5.

The bishop is the chairperson of the council’s Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes that conducts the program.

As many as 150 students from the state’s 18 Catholic dioceses attended the first-day program. The students will be guided in their desired area of study once a week, said Father Kulandainathan Adaikalasamy, the organizer and the secretary for the commission.

The program, he told Matters India, aims at providing “the best education possible for all the poor and the marginalized children.”

The commission hopes to instill new ideas and thoughts in Dalit students, to create new goals, and to make their dreams come true. No student would be deprived of higher education because of poverty, untouchabi-lity, and ignorance, he added.

The students sat in groups in villages maintaining the distance while attending the online pro-gram.