UNNAT BHARAT ABHIYAN
As a part of the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA), which is a flagship programme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, IIT Bhubaneswar has adopted six villages in Odisha, including a cluster of five villages in Khordha district (Arugul, Podapada, Kansapada, Khudupur and Padanpur) and Sundaria village, Jajpur district. The UBA programme in which IIT Bhubaneswar is participating actively targets to use the expertise available in the Institute to improve the quality of rural life through innovative and affordable technological interventions. Some of the issues to be addressed in the first phase are improvement in skill development for unemployed youth, quality of School Education, agriculture, sanitation, health care, awareness towards digital India, renewable energy use, and self-reliance.
In order to improve the quality of school education, science laboratories have been established and formally inaugurated in the presence of our Director, Prof. R.V. Raja Kumar and Collector, Khordha in the village schools of Arugul and Khudupur. Recently, the science laboratories have been established in the village schools of Podapada and Padanpur as well. With the help of NSS volunteers, English teaching classes and demonstrations of simple science experiments have been conducted in the village schools. Regular interaction with the village youth is being done to identify their concerns and work towards addressing them. Besides that, plantation drives have been conducted in the village schools and a street lamp, operating on solar power has been donated to one of the villages.