Friday, October 21, 2011

Flood Relief Initiative by SRC

There were devastating floods in most of the parts of Orissa. The life of lakhs of people was completely disrupted. Many organizations were struggling hard to support those victims. Red Cross played a major role in it by providing the medical help, food and relief kits in most of the villages. Social Responsibility Cell of XIMB provided the opportunity to XIMB students to be the part of the noble cause in association with Red Cross. Even I was the part of this flood relief team of XIMB.  The job I got was to distribute relief kits consisting of a bucket with tap, two soaps, three metal mugs, dettol, a bed sheet, small rope, chlorine tablets for water purification, bandage and  big size plastic cover, and create a summarized document of the whole activity.
 
We accompanied a supervisor from Red Cross Mr Sushant Patnayak and with 400 relief kits we visited a hamlet in Kendrapara district. There I was shock to see the situation in which those villagers were living. Water logged almost every were, hardly few huts were in their shape rest all was destructed. Villagers were in so much need that they literally ran behind the truck almost a kilometer. It’s very difficult to do the distribution work in that situation because villagers are in such a great need that they literally fight for those kits.  Somehow we managed to do the distribution with the help of volunteers present in the village. And I also note down the beneficiaries’ details.  It took us around six hours to complete the distribution process. 

This was really a great experience, it taught me the lesson for my life time that in disaster situation people are so much affected that they almost forget rationality. They are in such a great need that it’s really impossible for any organization to provide a complete support. I want to thank SRC for providing me the opportunity, were I could develop such a useful insight.

Leia Mais…

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Gramotsava 2011

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.

Leia Mais…

Joy of Giving Week: A helping hand towards Flood affected People of Orissa

“Sharing what you have is more important than what you have”
-    Albert M. Wells


The Joy of Giving Week stems from this idea and advocates this concept. It spreads out the message of giving happiness to one’s own life by giving back to society in abundance. The very act of giving/ donating elevates us to a place where we get eternal happiness and joy and this is accomplished when we transcend caste, colour, creed, religion and other biases in our mind. The Social Responsibility Cell of XIMB organized the Joy of Giving Week from 21st September to 26th September, 2011. This is India’s festival of ‘giving back’ to society. From auto drivers to CEOs, from homemakers to businessmen, everyone is encouraged in contribute to society in any possible way. It has been started with a hope that it grows and becomes a grand festival of ‘sharing’ which will unite people from different walks of life on a common platform.


This year, Goonj and Bakul foundation in association with SRC, aimed to mobilize relief to the people of Orissa, in lieu of the devastating floods which ravaged many parts of the state. For this, SRC organized a collection drive and appointed several volunteers who acted as POCs for particular areas of the campus. They took the initiative, worked hard and gave their time to the programme. Collection drop boxes were placed in GR1, GR2, MTR, RMH, Cenderet, Studio Apartments and XIMB gates. There was overwhelming support from the faculty and students of the campus and they came forward whole-heartedly towards this effort. The items collected from the institute included old clothes, stationary items, bags, slippers, medicines, etc. All the proceeds were donated to Bakul Foundation, which would then be distributed to the flood victims of Orissa. Overall, the programme was a huge success and once again demonstrated the undying spirit of SRC and the XIMB community towards contributing to the society at large.

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Orissa Heritage Development Program

Bhubaneswar's proud possession of magnificent sculptures and architectural heritage, coupled with the sanctity as Ekamrakshetra makes this one of the great religious centres of Orissa since early medieval days. Bhubaneswar has always been known as the “City of temples”. Temples like the Lingaraj Temple have put the city on the map. Together with Puri and Konark and, Bhubaneswar forms the Swarna Tribhuja "Golden Triangle", one of the most visited destinations in East India.

What is less common knowledge though, is the number of lesser known temples, scattered all over the city. Familiar only to locals, many of these temples date back to as far as the 8th century A.D. These temples figure in popular mythology, and are shrouded in stories and legends, however a significant number of these temples are in varying states of disrepair, and very little veritable information is available about them. 

As a tribute to these pieces of exquisite architecture, a team of students from the Social Responsibility Cell, XIMB, created Wikipedia pages as well as mapped the locations on Wikimapia and Google maps the for 150 of these temples as a part of Orissa Heritage Development Program. This program is being organized by the Young Indians Group, which is the youth wing of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The work is inspired from the book “Lesser Known Monuments of Bhubaneswar” by Dr. Sadasiba Pradhan which is also used as primary source for research for the content of the web pages, along with the ASI’s archives.

Some of the temples covered in this project were the series of Siva temples in Old town Bhubaneswar, Jain temples in Khandagiri, Astasambhu Siva Temples which is a collection of 8 Hindu temples dedicated to Lord Siva located in Bhubaneswar etc. A list of all such Hindu temples in Orissa can also be found in Wikipedia.

Leia Mais…