Vineetha considers herself fortunate that she had a school in her village while the villages around had no form of formal education and were forced to travel to Gundemadakala Village where she lived. The said school was a building consisting of two rooms where two teachers managed the students from 1st to 5th grade. The options for Vineetha Lekkala from Nellore district are not that limited today, she has been offered jobs in her core competencies by two of the most sought-after international companies. 

Vineetha’s family consists of her parents who are engaged in farming and cattle rearing, her younger sister who has recently been married and a younger brother who’s pursuing his board examinations for 10th. Her parents were formerly engaged in farming and were pushed to rely on cattle rearing due to frequent droughts leaving them in a financial mulch. “Now that I’ll be financially independent, I can support my younger sibling’s education and help them pursue the course that they want” – Vineetha is almost gleeful when she tells us what plans she has for her siblings. Probably because not very long ago she felt completely helpless when her sister had to discontinue her studies since she could not evoke enough confidence in her parents for them to risk a large chunk of their savings for her higher education and was married off instead. She wanted her sister to be financially independent just like herself. 

Vineetha who had figured out that the way to financial freedom was through education opted for engineering at the government run Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies to pursue her B.tech Electronics and Communications. She says that “Marks do not determine your competence; it is your skills that take you forward in life”. She joined the TechSaksham Program to build her skills in the technical sphere. Artificial Intelligence was a brief part of her curriculum and hence she could relate better with this track. Even though the final year of engineering for Vineetha was intense along with her internship which was a way to gain some experience while supporting herself, she was determined to learn through TechSaksham with the help of Live and Recorded Sessions.  

Vineetha believes that the  by providing hands on learning, bringing her closer to her dream. What started as a means to end has ended up providing Vineetha her job of dreams. She says “It’s not like a normal engineering job, where you sit Infront of the laptop entire day but rather it will push me to stand up to new challenges!”  

Vineetha has developed a fondness for challenges which were initially forced upon her by the circumstances. Instead, now she goes ahead and seeks them in the form of exciting learning and employment opportunities for herself and her siblings too. That is the best possible outcome we can expect from a lifetime of obstacles anyway.