School is my temple, the students are the deity and imparting the best education to them is my worship. These are the words that Sonalben Faldu, the principal of Shrimati Sarojini Naidu Girl’s High School, Rajkot lives by.

Faldu has served as an educator for over two decades during which she has been felicitated with multiple honorary awards.

Having completed her B.Ed degree, Faldu pursued a PhD course in ‘Maharishi Dayanand rachit Rigved-bhashya ka vivechanatmak adhyayan’. She then joined Smt DJ Patel Kanya Vidhyalay in Gujarat’s Morbi in the year 2000, before joining her current post in 2008.

She was bestowed with the ‘Best Principal’ award by former Gujarat Governor OP Kohli, as well as being awarded the ‘Uma Nari Ratna Puraskar’ by Union Minister Parshottam Rupala.

It was under her guidance that the school became one of the leading government schools across the state in addition to being one of the first ‘digital schools’. However, Faldu reserves all the credit for the students and their teachers.

“Because of their hard work, our class X and XII students started consistently outperforming their peers in other Rajkot schools. Gujarat Gas was looking to sponsor the ‘digitisation’ of a school and following their survey, concluded that our school was the ideal contender, given our distinguished record,” Faldu told Opoyi.

She also said that pupils in her school are taught online by US-based educators.

Preparation for competitive exams, addiction awareness, ‘Swachh Bharat’ activities, yoga, sports, voter awareness, political science awareness, self defence classes are some of the initiatives that her school has undertaken to ensure every student is best prepared for future endeavours.

“Through those activities, we ensure the students’ physical, mental and spiritual development so that they may go on to become respectable members of society,” she said.

Faldu has also ensured that ‘women empowerment’ is instilled in each student’s value system and that the school does its utmost to further the cause. She said that her school is the first to take the initiative of providing sanitary napkins for students, an unprecedented step for schools in Gujarat.

Extra-curricular activities are at the forefront of a student’s holistic growth, Faldu said, adding that pupils from her school have won many distinguished awards in areas other than academics.

“Our students won an award for a ‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign organised by (the TV show) ‘Tarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashma’. There was also a ‘Smart City’ mission organised by the state government, in which our students ran a 24-hour cleanliness campaign, for which we were given an award,” she said.