The Social Responsibility Cell of XIMB got a unique opportunity to bring social awareness in sectors related to health and education during Gramotsava 2011- a rural marketing fair. The 2 day fair was organised in two different villages of Puri and Cuttak districts, one at village mandarbasta in district Khurda and other at chasakhanda in district Cuttack. The fair pulled up huge crowd of children, adults, and women. In order to bring social awareness SRC team members organised DART Game, Ball Game and Ring Game. Winners of the game were given prizes of daily use and additional information was given about the relevance and importance of use of product given as a prize. The game was so designed that after playing the game an additional socially relevant question was asked to them and only if they answer it correctly, a product of daily use was given to them. Team members also organised procession march in village shouting slogans of social awareness like “Ladka Ladki Ek Saman, Sabko Siksha Ka Adhikar”, “Saaf pani peena hai, humko jada jena hai” and inviting people to attend the fair in the villages. Members also performed Nukkad Nattak on social issues like gender discrimination, health and hygiene, women empowerment and education.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”-linking this tagline with that village we found awesome landscape, paddy fields, developed roads with strong rural economy in terms of agriculture.At the outset, we have decorated with alluring decorative items in the stall. As the stall of SRC was the first stall, we have decorated nicely with balloons, ribbons, and some decorative flounce jorry works. We kept our games ready as before as possible taking into consideration of the enthusiasm of the villagers. The Sarpanch of the village came to our stall and inaugurated it by cutting the ribbon with huge round of applause. He had appreciated us much for our holistic approach towards social awareness and responsibility.
After one hour we have gone for rally to the village. We held our placards and slogans and shouted the slogans with aplomb. The slogans were mainly focused on many angles of social awareness like women empowerment, sarvasikha avijan, water resources, population control and hygiene factor. When we came across any villagers we have tried to give the message to them and invited them to our stall to visit to play. We have also stretched our co-operative hands to our RMAX team for promoting the rural marketing of the specific brands. Due to lack of ample time, we could not be successful to do the skit and nukkad natak.
In the stall we have had three games. All the games were entertaining and educative as well. The first game was rolling the ball game in which we have given the ball to the villagers and told them to roll. We have assigned six positions and prizes associated with it. Then we asked them questions related to social awareness factors like, health issues and diseases (malaria, dengue, chikungunya, AIDS, Cholera) hygiene factors, social programs (like NREGA, Indira Awas and some Govt plans), disaster management etc.
Similarly the other games were ring game (throw the ring to the items) and dart game (throw the dart to the dartboard). In all games we had to ask the people questions and if they answer correctly we have distributed the prizes like nail cutter, soap, tooth paste, pens, chocolates etc. The game was opened till 5.30 PM as the crowd was growing and growing. Finally we have packed our accessories and left for our hostel.
Rural India is the real Indian society where we had been successful by creating social awareness. SRC of XIMB believes that- A Smile is contagious...Lets spread it!!! And we had been successful in some extent by creating it this time with spreading the smile with entertainment through social awareness.
