MP makes up for missing date on graduation day, assures support
It was a surprise for the participants at International Institute of Social Entrepreneurship (IISE) as Trivandrum’s MP Shashi Tharoor spent an evening with them on Saturday.
The MP made the visit to make up for his missing their graduation function earlier this month. The visit was an informal meeting that with a tangible absence of the usual pack of reporters and photojournalists that surrounds the MP.
The IISE is an institution that trains people from different countries who have overcome trials and tribulations and want to bring about a social change through a social entrepreneurship project.
Tharoor expressed his surprise in finding out that such an institution exists in his constituency. He said: “No one ever told me about the IISE. I was astonished that there was such an institution in my constituency.”
Sabriye Tenberken had gone blind at the age of twelve.
He listened to the story of Sabriye Tenberken and her partner Paul Kronenburg with great awe, and then said: “A handicap is a handicap only if you let it be a handicap.”
Tharoor also took a tour of the sylvan lakeside campus and checked out the development models and projects made by Shyam, the lead technical innovator at IISE. This included a mobile classroom for teaching braille to blind people in remote areas, solar-powered boats, etc.
Later the MP also spoke to the mostly blind participants of IISE. He said: “My former boss and friend Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, used to say, ‘No one can humiliate you without your consent’.. Likewise no one can take from you, your faith in yourself.”
Tharoor also conveyed to Sabriye his desire to be back with his wife Sunanda Pushkar to the IISE during Christmas. He also assured that he will do his best to help the projects at IISE.
Sabriye in her reply speech said: “We hope you would come back. Let us join hands and shape the world, so that it becomes a little of a better place.”
Name of Source: Yentha.com