A 16-year-old girl and her 14-year-old brother have gifted a toilet to the government girl's school in their home district in Madhya Pradesh's Narsingpur. Maimoona Khan and her brother Aamir scraped together scholarship money given to them for being "minority community students", supplementing it with some of their own savings, to help build a toilet at Maharani Laxmi Bai Girls Higher Secondary School, where Maimoona studies.
"The school had only one toilet," Maimoona told The Times of India. "I'd feel bad seeing students standing in a queue."
They returned some of their scholarship money--around ₹8,000--and added another ₹2,000 of their own savings. Their father also contributed ₹14,500, according to the report.
The class 11 student had also written to the state chief minister Shivraj Chouhan five years ago to build a road that connected her school to the rest of the district. Her persistent letter-writing paid off when Chouhan finally took note of the issue and sanctioned the road to be built.
The state has reportedly lagged behind its target to build toilets under the Swachh Bharat Mission. Besides the government, non profits are helping villagers in the state to get access to toilets. Last year, a man gifted his sister a toilet during the "raksha bandhan" festival.