Sri Guru Raghavendra Charitable Trust® Lakkasandra Village, Tubugere Post – Doddaballapur Taluk, Bangalore Rural Website – ; –

Agenda Overview Volunteers introduction Socioeconomic background of community Programs Community impact Sustainability plan Future demand Questions

Overview Sri Guru Raghavendra Charitable Trust (SGRCT) located at an hamlet called Lakkasandra, 65 Kms from Bangalore. Was established in 2001 by Mr. H. S Sheshagiri. Striving towards building righteous rural community by dealing many social issues by fixing the root cause of illiteracy Currently serving the community of 30+ villages with population of 330,000+ Direct beneficiaries 400+ and more than children indirectly influenced and benefitted by our activities.

Overview Mission – “ The mission is to endeavor for the overall development of socially backward villages where Child labor, women bigotry, unemployment, child marriage, alcoholism etc are dominant by addressing the root cause of illiteracy. Strive to eradicate the ignorance of poor villagers and build a righteous society" Vision – “ In the age of deteriorating values, principles and human culture in the society - our prime focus is and would be to inculcate these values at an early stage among children who would be tomorrow's society. Poverty, illiteracy and ignorance should not be a blockade for the progress of the rural poor people."

Volunteer’s Introduction The NGO is run at a remote village lacking basic facilities and the promoters lack exposure to outside world. We volunteers are helping the promoters of the NGO by representing them in forums. Volunteers – Suresh B C associated with NGO for over 6 years and professionally a Project Manager at Cognizant Technologies. Prashanth M S associated with NGO for over 5 Years, professionally a Senior software Engineer at Thomson Reuters. Sudheer Kumar associated with NGO for over 2 Years, professionally a Team Lead at CISCO. Sreedhar K R associated with NGO for over 3 Years, professionally a Tech Lead at Oracle.

Socioeconomic background of community Literacy rate in 30+ villages of our project – less than 25%. Average income range of family – Rs Per Annum. Ignorance of villagers and their ‘No to Education’ attitude. Children are taken out/sent for farming and feeding cattle there by making child laborers. Girl literacy ratio is less than 10%. Unemployment, poverty, addiction to alcohol, child marriage, unhygienic livelihood are few of the social issues in the community.

Socioeconomic background of community Govt of India states, elementary education is an fundamental right to children and every Kilometre there should be a school. But, this has failed in implementation in our project area. The existent Govt schools do not focus on quality, the drop out children are not retained. As the villages are remote in terms of accessibility and weak transportation facility, availability of faculty in Govt schools is inadequate.

Programs 1. Counseling to create awareness 2. Improving access to education 3. Vocational Training and Placements

Programs Counseling to create awareness The charity is running a counseling program to the poor and illiterate villagers to create awareness about sending their children, especially girls to school, instead of taking along for labor jobs Counseling is also done about avoiding early girls marriage and continuing their education, vocational training and getting good employment. Covers other areas like hygiene, healthcare, maintaining ecosystem, etc, which are absolutely necessary to the illiterate and ignorant village folks.

Programs Improving access to education The school run by the charity takes care of counseled people's children and gives them education till 10th standard and helps them to further their education. Provide transportation to each village to bring children to school there by providing accessibility to schools. Here, children belonging to all religions attend school, which shows non-religious nature of the charity Our curriculum includes not only academics, but other topics related to general broadening of IQ, which increases their thinking power and eventually touches all aspects related to several issues haunting the community, especially child labor, bigotry on women, poverty, addiction to alcohol etc

Programs Vocational Training,Placements, Computer literacy The charity is on the steps of providing vocational training in computers and relevant different courses to school/college dropouts and helps them to gain decent employment. This breaks the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and improves girls literacy ratio and has removed several social bigotries like early child, especially girls marriage, hygiene, healthcare and ecosystem, etc. Also provides an sustainability factor to run the existing activities of charity.

Community impact School going children ratio has increased to 63% owing to the counseling program in 30 villages. School going girls ratio has increased to 70% in the project area. Accessibility to school for each children in all 30 villages is provided by the transport facility. School drop out children are Nil in the institution. Girl students are completing their elementary education rather than dropping out once they attain puberty. The popularity has spread to other 40+ villages and the potential beneficiary strength is increasing.

Sustainability Plan The strategy NGO looking forward to generate resource to run their programs is through village based non-voiced data entry BPO. The plans are taking shape to set up an computer institute to provide computer literacy on job oriented skills to unemployed and college dropped out youth. Looking forward to avail data entry projects and employ skilled resources to start with.

Future demand There is an extreme demand from 30+ villages with 310,000 population to send their children to the institute. The present infrastructure is holding the charity to serve more beneficiaries. The classrooms are housed in temple premises and requires expansion to meet the demand.

Questions

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