By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: On a wintry February morning, a strong contingent of 40 faculty members and students descended at Kalwari village under the Taoru tehshil of Haryana’s Mewat district.
The purpose was to initiate an on-field study to implement President Pranab Mukherjee’s vision and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal for adopting a village and transforming it into model village by infusing urban facilities in rural areas.
Sri Aurobindo College (Evening) of University of Delhi has initiated the programme under the convenership of Dr Pragyendu, Dr Mahesh Darolia and Dr Anista Chauhan under the leadership of the college principal Dr Prashant Kumar.
This village is very near the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and 56 kms from the national capital but still shows negligible signs of development. And that was the reason why this programme was initiated at Kalwari village, which is suffering from the highest female illiteracy rate and the highest dropout rate among students at primary level among all the villages in Mewat district, poor facilities of water, electricity and road connectivity and high migration rate among villagers.
The first visit took place on February 13, 2015. In this programme, the college’s present student union and alumni, Narender Yadav and his team are also willing to actively participate for the next five years of the programme.
According to Dr Pragyendu, the motive of this programme is to provide intervention based sustainable development in six different areas such as women empowerment, health and hygiene, education and skill development, clean energy and sustainable development, agro-economy, and socio-political awareness regarding government developmental policies.
Department of Psychology of Sri Aurobindo College (Evening) has also initiated a 24×7 helpline by opening 20 phone lines, which will be handled by dedicated students and various faculty members in order to solve day to day problems of the villagers regarding mental health and other six dimensions of intervention programme.
The college team will visit the village 8-10 times a year continuously for five years of the programme in order to personally identifying the problem areas of the villagers, providing solutions and receiving continuous feedback from the grass-root level of the Kalwari village.
College team said the village sarpanch Rekha Yadav and the whole panchayat members and villagers have shown enthusiasm about the programme to be carried on in their village.
Through this programme, classroom knowledge can easily be integrated with on-field experience, which would bring significant improvement in the well-being of the villagers. It will also enhance voluntarism attitude and pro-social activities among students, the teachers said.