“Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation (EVF)” raised over $4 million in a star-studded virtual Gala, called “Future of India” that highlighted pre-eminent speakers, Ekal’s eclectic accomplishments and youth’s contributions to its mission on Saturday, November 13, 2021.
As per Indian demography, two third of its population resides in villages. Ekal, as it is popularly known, currently has presence in over 102,000 rural-tribal areas all across India with a reach to over 300,000 such clusters of habitants. Although rooted in education, Ekal has blossomed into providing healthcare, integrated village development, empowering functionality and new-age technology to these rural folks.
This two-hour event, co-chaired by Mohan Wanchoo and Kamlesh Shah, both successful entrepreneurs and philanthropist, saw consistent overwhelming response from the donors, from the moment it opened up till it was capped by youthful entertainment by “Penn-Masala’, a youthful group of famous singers from “University of Pennsylvania”.
The funds raised at the Gala were for specific projects, such as tailoring training centers, E-shiksha, Ekal-on-Wheels, Telemedicine, Gramotthan Research Centers, and Integrated Village Development. Mohan Wanchoo, who pioneered Gala events at Ekal, regaled viewers with a personal story of how hospitable tribal villagers were in the midst of a horrific tragedy that they had endured earlier.
As a professional singer he mesmerized the viewers with an inspiring song in his melodious voice. Kamlesh Shah elaborated on Ekal’s aggressive fight with Covid-19 pandemic and the steps, that were taken to fight misinformation about the virus and the treatment. From the interspersed interviews of rural children, it was quite evident that Ekal has fired up their imagination to aspire for becoming Doctors, Soldiers, Teachers etc.
Ekal’s women-centric empowerment activities and education as a tool for progress touched a nerve with all three chief guest speakers who whole heartedly supported Ekal’s selfless mission for the future of India. Kiran Mozumdar-Shaw, founder of Biocon and recipient of ‘Padma Bhushan’ honor, emphasized the need for digital tracking of patients by the tech-savvy nursing caretakers, as the core point for managing the pandemic.
Coming from a humble family, Renu Khator, President of University of Houston system chancellor, stressed on the important role the education has played throughout her Steller career. She lauded EVF’s efforts for women empowerment. Naren Chaudhary, CEO of highly successful ‘Panera Bread’ brand, explained how his daughter – ‘Aisha’ – was the central motivating factor in whatever he did in his life. He expressed unequivocal passion for his country – India – where he had witnessed ‘spirit of humanity’ in his own time of acute need to save Aisha.
Ranjani Saigal, the Executive Director of Ekal-USA assured him that his daughter’s legacy lives through what Ekal does best. For every $1 a donor invests in Ekal activities, Ekal volunteers provides $8 worth of selfless volunteer efforts. Ekal’s youth-wing had raised substantial amount of funding to arrest the spread of Covid pandemic. During the Gala, they freely talked about what attracted them most to this largest social endeavor, supported by the Indians and NRIs, in dozen countries. Ekal supports all its activities without any regards to a particular region, religion or gender.
A galaxy of Bollywood stars – from Hema Malini, Boney Kapoor, Subhash Ghai to Varun Dhavan, Udit Narayan, Alia Bhatt – provided glitz with their enthusiastic support for Ekal. A ZEE-TV ‘2019 Cine Awards’ clip, showed three Ekal alumni students honored, for exceptional achievements. This public honor was bestowed on ‘Pinky Karmakar’ of Assam who was the torch-bearer at 2012 London Olympics, ‘Divya Malgave’ of Maharashtra who won a Gold Medal at ‘International Intermediate Karat Championship’ and ‘Ramchandra Verma’ of U.P. who has made his birthplace – ‘Aligunj’ – an ideal ‘Gaav’ (village). While unveiling the roadmap for the future, Suresh Iyer, the President of Ekal-USA, confirmed that the essential objectives of all the projects are two-fold – first, to prevent migration of rural folks to urban areas for lack of opportunities and second, to increase the economic and social impact on their lives. He appealed viewers to join hands with Ekal for the better ‘Future of India’.
Ekal-India team presented revitalized facets of ‘Ekal Abhiyan’, namely ‘Digital Literacy’, ‘Arogya Foundation’, ‘Gramothan Foundation’, ‘E-Shiksha’, and ‘Global Communication’, with a focus on the covid-19 pandemic, skill development and economic empowerment. The host team along with Ekal-Canada was composed of members of the board of directors, working committees, regional & chapter presidents and the youth wing. This Pan-American team introduced the topics like innovativeness and accountability in capital projects, technology roadmap, fund-raising targets, cutting-edge technology for project management, and youth involvement.
On the covid-19 front, Ekal’s success in rural-tribal areas is staggering. Because of the aggressive safety campaign, herbal medications, nutritional food provisions and isolationist tactics that Ekal field volunteers vigorously promoted there, the pandemic’s effect on rural folks was very minimal. Field volunteers, not only countered the misinformation about the vaccine by asserting its benefit but also, made it worry-free with videos of their own vaccination. This led the vaccination rate to 71% in some corners.
Last year, Ekal’s successful initiative against covid was based on self-monitoring, self-reliance, education and cooperative-exchanges. It included a wide-spread awareness campaign about the hygiene, social distancing, food distribution, mask-making and restrictive movements. The new offensive has not only incorporated all these steps in the direct-action roadmap, but also, has started a proactive counter campaign against the misinformation about the vaccine, the danger posed by covid and voodoo- treatments. With extensive reach well beyond its footings, Ekal has mobilized tens of thousands of its school teachers for this information campaign. ‘Ekal-Arogya (Health Foundation)’ has established 24-hr Telehealth lifeline (# 011 41236457) for professional medical counselling.
Covid-19 is a global phenomenon but in India it is being tossed around like a political football whose ultimate goal is, not only to project how the country is on the brink of ‘Armageddon’, but also, to emphasize how inept and insensitive the current administration is. The major players in this game are the opposition political parties and their surrogates. Scores of leading opposition political leaders who are now clamoring for vaccines, had earlier not only mocked the idea of vaccination, but also, had floated vigorous anti-vaccine campaign. The current shortage of ‘oxygen’ has everything to do with the lethargy of the State-govts. The Central-govt had sectioned 162 oxygen generating PSA plants for strategic areas across India but the States collectively set only 33 plants and blamed the Central-govt for their own ineptitude. Make no mistake, in this game, some national and international Medias are also involved. Instead of reporting positive inspiring stories, they mass-marketed unflattering, exaggerated or sometimes even fake stories. The international Media has converged on India’s plight as if it is the biggest calamity the world has ever witnessed. When China, the birthplace of Covid-19 and the global capital of misinformation, recently planted a mischievous tweet on the social-media, it was summarily condemned by a major news organization in U.S. We all know how a leading New York tabloid, couple of weeks back, used a picture of a roadside dead body from some gas leakage somewhere, to support their claim, ‘how the people in India are dying on the streets’. This is not an isolated incidence. Scandal-sniffing notorious British press isn’t less offensive either. The international media-cartel has never publicized the complicity of their own govts in the current crisis. As per WHO, 87% of vaccines have been cornered by high-income countries and only 0.2% of vaccines have gone to poor countries. The Indian ‘netizens’ who also now include numerous private TV channels, have proved themselves equal to so-called ‘yellow journalism’ by exposing all the falsification and putting it against rock-solid proofs. When, opposition parties are harping on the sorry conditions in the country, it is worth noting that none of their cadre or party-workers are seen anywhere helping out the masses. In their stark absence, the people have taken things into their own hands. At this moment, lot of caregiving is being done by numerous social or religious local organizations. All these organizations are collectively providing hundreds of thousands of meals to the needy people; setting up thousands of beds and acquiring necessary equipment & medications, where possible. Spearheading these efforts, nationwide, are RSS, VHP volunteers.