NGO CORPORATE INITIATIVE IN RURAL EDUCATION

Saklavara is a sleepy little village, barely 17 kilometres away from the Silicon City of Bangalore, and close to the Bannerghata National Park. Yet the sprawling metropolis and this village are worlds apart - in terms of wealth, education, affluence, social character, and infrastructure.  The difference and the disparity is stark, and leaves you bewildered, that there can two such extremities of life and living standards, and in such close proximity. 
Gross household incomes seldom cross Rs.30,000/- a year, drinking water is still a major problem, roads are in a shoddy state, and health and medical facilities are non existent. Most adults have a TV and a cell phone that they can ill afford, but a landline telephone line is still a dream and difficult to access, as the department is unwilling to provide this service unless there is a threshold number of subscribers. To sum it up, life, in this village that dots the periphery of the globally known IT City, is pathetic, and shames modern India.  
All the village children, without much choice, go to a government school in the vicinity, built on land that was once a graveyard, and around the interred tombs of the forefathers of people who were once benefactors of this village, and inheritors of a 'jodigram'. The children, though, ignore this central monument, and have got used to sitting on and revelling around these solemn and very visible tombstones that strike visitors and others as odd and morbidly inappropriate, as if the village and their children had any choice to determine where they would like to educate themselves.
Attendance at this school of 200 children was always poor and interest in education was abysmal, to say the least, until a new team of government appointed teachers in the new millennium believed that they could bring about a healthy change, despite a student teacher ration of 50 to 1. They invited the Vijayam Bharani Trust to support the malnourished children with a mid day meal scheme to offer healthy, nutritious food, that is today partly the incentive for the children to go to school, and encouraged them to post attendance of almost 95%, a record for any government school. The Trust which has set up a modern eco friendly kitchen in the village, offers tasty and deliciously nutritious meals, 210 days a year, to a couple of schools in the village, including this government school.
 Today the school has been adopted by the Rotary Club of Bangalore, the oldest Rotary Club in Bangalore that has spearheaded many initiatives to reach out to the community. More recently, this Club, celebrating its Platinum Jubilee, has invited Corporates to partner and support them in fulfilling their corporate social objectives by sharing resources, manpower and logistics to make a difference to the lives of those who are underprivileged and who lack the means to initiate social change without a helping hand.
One such initiative is the joining of hands in an NGO Corporate partnership between the Rotary Club of Bangalore and the ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd. which has picked the Sakalvara Government school to bring about a significant and visible change.  Today the school has 3 new classrooms. a hall for computer education, a spanking new and levelled playground, with sports facilities, and separate toilet facilities for both boys and girls, with water storage tanks and sumps.  
This is probably the only government school to have a water harvesting facility, lending its mite in building a greener planet.  

Further, and more importantly, the Rotary Club of Bangalore, in cooperation with Tidaldata Inc., a California based Company, introduced the revolutionary E Pod, a cost effective, a hand held device, that carries the entire syllabus of the State, in the language of your choice, voice activated, and user friendly. This will transform the way education is managed, especially in rural schools, and accelerate the learning process, and complement the teachers' attempts to bring rural and urban education to comparable levels. 30 E Pods were handed over to the school this morning in a simple but meaningful function, in the presence of Past Rotary International Director Rtn. Panduranga Setty, District Governor Nominee Rtn. P. Potnis, and Shri Srinivas of Tidaldata, California. The E Pod is set to bring about a renaissance in the way education is administered and managed, especially in rural and government schools that have inadequate infrastructure, and the Sakalvara Government School is the first school in India to be enabled. The simplicity and ease of use is amplified by the fact that they can all be charged through a single Solar Panel and dispenses with the use of batteries, back ups, and power supply, thus enabling education even in the remotest parts of the State.
Rotary Club of Bangalore and the ICICI Lombard have set a wonderful example of how meaningful Corporate and NGO partnerships can transform the lives of deprived children and offer hope, meaning, and opportunity to all of them, paving the way for a revolutionary approach to educating the masses and adding sense  and value to rural literacy.