Ekal Vidalaya Fundraiser June 1 at UH Cullen Auditorium

The Ekal on Wheels mobile computer lab , shown with volunteers. Ekal Houston’s Ramesh Shah and wife Kokila are shown on extreme right

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Houston: The Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, USA is a registered, tax-exempt (501C), nonprofit service organization dedicated to bringing education and village development to rural India. Ekal is the largest grassroots, Non government organization (NGO) operating in remote and tribal villages of India. Ekal currently operates 85,000+ schools in as many villages across the entire nation educating over 2.5 million children annually, more than half of them being girls.

Ekal launched special projects to further develop villages as self sustaining social and economic units:

• Ekal Tailoring Centers (ETC) train women to earn a living, raising their self-esteem while sewing clothes for themselves and their families. Currently, there are 15 main centers and over 70 satellite training centers.

• Gramotthan Resource Centers (GRC): where, apart from skill training, the centers have demonstration units which showcase their agricultural techniques like organic farming, solar repairs etc.

• IVD (Integrated Village Development) is a concept for empowering and uplifting the rural and tribal sections of the society thereby making the entire village a self sufficient unit.

• The Telemedicine project, first of its kind in Ekal with support from Johns Hopkins University, is bringing expert medical advice to the doorsteps of remote villagers in Odisha.

• Ekal on Wheels (mobile computer lab), E-shiksha (which imparts digital literacy using tablets). Each van has 9 laptops to teach 18 trainees at a time.

• As of 2018, Ekal also helped create 60,000 rural self-sustaining trade jobs.

As part of a series of annual concerts across North America, Ekal Houston is hosting a special fundraising performance by the Saregama famed Vishwanath Batunge and group on Saturday, June 1, with dinner at 6 PM followed by entertainment at the University of Houston, Cullen Performance Hall/ Student center, 4800 Calhoun Rd, Houston TX 77024.