On Sundays, nearly 100 school girls from underprivileged and marginalised families, some with their parents and most of them alone, get down at Kudappanakkunnu junction from KSRTC buses coming from the margins of the capital district, from the coast and the fringes of the Western Ghats, and walk the nearly 300-metre road leading up to the Thiruvananthapuram Collectorate.

These girls, ninth to twelfth standard students, are at the Collectorate to attend their weekly Collector's Super 100 classes.

Now in its fourth year, this educational project of the Thiruvananthapuram District Administration was created to empower academically promising girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers.

"When we began the project in 2023-24, our goal was to change the destiny of 100 school girls," said Anson P D Alexander, the founder and director of the NGO, Kanal, that runs this programme.

"This project is the brainchild of then district collector Geromic George, and is a joint initiative of Thiruvananthapuram District Administration, Women and Child Development Department, Trenser Technologies (Technopark) and Kanal," he said.

Collector's Super 100 is a reimagining of the Centre's Beti Bachao Beti Patao campaign.

"Various awareness programmes are conducted in all districts under the Beti Bachao Beti Patao scheme. The norm is to give one awareness class to as many girls as possible, say 1000 girls at a time. But under Collector's 100, we changed it to 1000 classes for 100 girls," Anson said.

Selection of Super Girls
Membership of the Collector's Super 100 group is through a three-step process: entrance test, group discussion and interview.

In 2023-24, the first academic year, tests were held for all four (9-12) grades. Subsequently, tests were held only for entry to the ninth standard. This year, 35 girls were chosen. This way, even after occasional dropouts and the exit of 12th standard students, Collector's Super 100 justifies its title every year.

Entry is exclusively for the disadvantaged: 20 per cent each for students from coastal, tribal and scheduled caste communities, and 40 per cent for those from economically weaker sections.

World of Super 100
The Super 100 girls are provided not just academic reinforcement but also confidence boosters. The academic sessions, held during weekends and holidays, offer the two value additions children from financially distressed families are deprived of: supplementary tuition and entrance coaching.

The students are divided into four clusters: Thattela (near Sreekaryam), Thoppu (near Shanghumuhom), Vettucaud, and Nedumangad. On Saturdays, students from each cluster attend classes at a school within the cluster. On Sundays, all of them come together at Thiruvananthapuram Collectorate.

Some come from places as remote as Vithura, nearly 30 kms away from the Collectorate. Mallika, a widowed domestic help, and her daughter Amritha who became a Super 100 girl this year have to walk five kilometres through the elephant-populated forest to reach the nearest bus stand at Vithura.

"If she has been selected for this Collector's training, it means she is good. Perhaps now my child can achieve her dream of becoming a nurse," Mallika said. This could be her daughter's true aspiration or it could have stemmed from the student's belief that nursing is the only profession within her reach.

Launch vehicles
Most Super 100 girls, like Amritha, are children of daily wagers, fish workers, domestic helps, salesgirls and rural employment guarantee workers.

Thermodynamics, evolution, and electrochemistry will certainly fire their imaginations, but these will still not impart the propulsive thrust to let the aspiration levels of these girls soar.

For this, the wide expanse of possibilities should be revealed to the girls. This is where 'exposure visits' to reputed organisations like ISRO, National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Research (NIIST), Technopark and Hindustan Lifecare Limited help.

"Exposure visits, workshops and STEM-based experiments are highlights of this project. We take these children to STEM-related fields (two-day Robotics camp at Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies, for instance) and offer them hands-on experience. This exposes them to new career possibilities. They understand medicine and engineering better but also realise that there is much more happening in science and technology outside these respected professions," said Fousteena Jose, Kanal's child welfare associate.

Teacher bros
However, it is from the volunteer system that the girls draw their biggest inspiration. Their teachers are only four or five years older than them, mostly students from the College of Engineering and the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram.

Super 100 girls Onmanorama talked to said that unlike in school, they felt free to ask doubts, and that too any number of times, to the "slightly older brothers and sisters" who coach them.

"We share a similar vibe. That could be why we understand a lot better. You ask them any number of times and they will willingly teach you," said Dunya Anshad who studies at St Rochs High School near Shanghumughom.

There is an even bigger reason why these 'teacher bros' are favourites. "They cracked NEET and KEAM just a few years ago, and we would very much want to be like them," said Meera Rajan from Pallithura coast.

"It was after she came to Super 100 that my daughter wanted to become a doctor," said Seetha, mother of Aswathy. "Now we think that she really has a chance to be a doctor," Seetha said. Her husband is a daily wager.

The 'volunteers' have found this endearing. "They treat me like their sister," said Sherara R, a fourth-year Mechanical student at College of Engineering, Trivandrum. "I came here wanting to develop in these girls an interest in science," she said.

Advaith Sunil, a second-year Electronics and Communication student at CET, said his primary motive was selfish. "When you teach, my understanding and knowledge of the subject will increase. That is the basic motive," he said, and added: "And the smile on these kids when I teach them something gives me a lot of satisfaction."

Results
These 'volunteers' have reasons to feel proud, too.
Here is what is said in Collector's Super 100 Annual Report 2025-26. "In the academic year 2025-2026, the girls of Collector’s Super 100 showed commendable performances in the final exams, both in HSE (12th std) and SSLC (10th std). A total of 25 students from the Coastal and Tribal batches appeared for the Class XII examinations, resulting in a 96% pass percentage. Among them, 7 students (28%) secured scores above 90%, while 6 students (24%) scored between 80% and 90%. Overall, 84% of the students scored above 70%."

And the careers Super 100 girls have chosen? "Across the three batches that have completed higher secondary education, a total of 68 students have passed out from the programme. Of these, 61 students (89.7%) have opted for STEM disciplines, while 7 students (10.3%) have chosen non-STEM fields," the report says.