Thanks to the generous employees of the UT who decided to give last year's Christmas gift to Aadhaar (a charity organization founded by Indian students at the UT), a knowledge center in Soundad village in central India was opened this summer.
Aadhaar is a small non-commercial group begun in August 1997 in the Netherlands which provides the foundation to support social activities in India. Its main focus is to help the underprivileged in India through education and vocational training, providing medical facilities, support for women, and ensuring basic facilities in rural India.
One of its recent projects, supported by the funds raised from last year's Christmas gift by the faculty of TNW, is a knowledge center in Soundad, a small village in the state of Maharastra in central India. It is a very impoverished village with few educational facilities and is home to some very old and poor tribes. Most of the families living there are unable to provide their children even the basic educational needs for books, stationary etc. That's where this idea of developing a knowledge center can play an important role in social transformation.
Pramod Agrawal, a postdoctoral fellow in CT, comes from Soundad and has been actively involved in the project: `This idea came from one of Aadhaar's regular meetings last October. Since a similar project was undertaken with the funds from the TNW Christmas gift of 2003, it was not too difficult to convince Prof. A. Bliek, dean of the TNW faculty to consider Aadhaar for 2005 as well. In November 2005, three different organizations including Aadhaar were selected for the money from the Christmas gift. Everything worked out very well, and thanks to the TNW and the UT employees a working knowledge center is in place”.
Nearly 1100 euros (60,000 INR) was received by the end of 2005. Finally `Aadhaar Knowledge Centre” was inaugurated on the 11th of July 2006 from this fund, just in time for the new academic year for the students in India. At this moment this knowledge center is becoming a place for underprivileged students to connect to the outside world and to know the global environment. Presently it has nearly 500 new books, mainly to stimulate kids to study science and technology. This knowledge centre also acts as a book bank for students, where they can borrow a complete book set for a certain academic year, reducing the economic burden on the families.
It also has a computer room. This new computer has nearly 100 hours of education based software, online school lessons from renowned teachers across India, and a few freely available motivational movies. This computer centre is also used to teach basic computers to the children. `Apart from books and computers, the library also receives at least five newspapers in different languages and a few magazines for kids. Aadhaar even appointed a full time librarian, who is physically challenged. The knowledge centre is creating a very good awareness about education in the village and nearby areas; it is a small step towards bridging the gap between the booming Indian economy and impoverished villages', says Agrawal with optimism and enthusiasm.
