The Centre, Orissa government and the London based Vedanta Foundation have joined hands to equip underprivileged students in the tribal dominated Kalahandi and Rayagada districts with quality computer and information technology knowledge and enable them to compete with their counterparts in the country’s prosperous urban centres like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar.
The three agencies through a specially packaged programme called Vedanta E-Shiksha@Schools Project (VESP), aim to bridge the gap between the affluent and the poor students by providing quality E-content in their own localities.
While the Union government is supporting the mission through its flagship programme Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the Orissa state government’s mass education department and Vedanta Foundation are extending all infrastructural, technical and financial assistance, besides providing top human resources.
“India is fast emerging as the information technology (IT) capital of the world. However, there still exists a great digital divide as the benefits of Information Technology are savoured by only a few who can afford this education, making computer literacy inaccessible for many. Gaining basic computer education is expensive and out of reach for lesser privileged. Hence, we have been working towards bridging the privilege gap, by providing equal learning opportunities to those deprived of it,” says former minister and local tribal leader Balabhadra Majhi. Mr Balabhadra Majhi is actively involved in the programme as the state government’s representative.
“The project aims at bridging this gap by providing quality E-content for regular subjects like English, mathematics, social studies and science, E-content for basic computer literacy, training of teachers and day to day monitoring of the programme,” says T. Ravikrishnan of the Vedanta Foundation.
He adds that the programme provides the right opportunity to the less privileged rural children and nurtures them to be better acquainted with computers, improve their competence in core subjects and overall pass percentage, besides decreasing the school dropout rate.
The Union and the state governments along with the Vedanta Foundation claim to have enabled over 2933 government schools across Maharashtra, Goa, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Orissa to offer high quality education through information and communication technology (ICT) benefiting more than three lakh students.
In Orissa, the programme is said to have benefited nearly eight thousand students in 21 tribal schools in Kalahandi and Rayagada districts.
“Teachers are already trained to impart qualitative learning to the discerning children. Our vision is to reach ten thousand schools benefiting one million children and empower teachers and students in every corner of India with technology-led education,” informs Mr Ravikrishnam.