Thursday 28 May 2015

Bicycle donation (2014-15)

Group for Rural Activities is a students' club aimed at working to understand and promote welfare of the rural sectors of our country. Bicycle donation camp is one of the activities that we regularly conduct to this end. Our institute is full of cycles which are unclaimed and can be donated after some repair. We make efforts to round up such bicycles, get them repaired and donate them to needy students in remote regions. In order to get the cycles repaired we collect fund from the professors on campus by way of door to door fund collection. We take pride in what we do and we hope that somebody somewhere benefits in a significant way from what we do. 

Details of cycles collected: We coordinated with the Hostel council and Hall Managers of each hostel. We finally collected from hostel 1, 2, 4 and 9 have given us 3, 16, 2, 7 bicycles respectively (Total =29 = 28+1 (donated by faculty)) for donation to the students. However, we found one bicycle missing from the collection of cycles, before transporting it for repair. 

Details of the shop where they were sent for repair: The repair shop was chosen to be near the school. This was done to get a cheaper repair of cycles and keeping in mind that had it been repaired from here, there might have had damages during transport of repaired cycles. The name of the cycle shop is “Mahesh Cycle Mart Yashvantnagar, Vikramgarh”. The brief expenditure on each cycle repairing is attached with the report. The total repairing cost came out to be Rs. 22,185. 

Details of transportation: Transportation of cycles from IITB to repair shop took Rs. 6,250. Transportation of repaired cycles from shop to school did cost Rs. 500. 

Details of the school where the cycles were given: From our previuos contacts, we contacted to the principle of the school, and donated to Smt. K. J. Jogani High School, Bhopoli”, in Vikramgarh taluka, Palgarh district. This is a school mainly for tribal students


Details of the camp: 24 of us (list of student went for the trip is attached) left for Bhopoli in a bus on the morning of 17th January 2015 in a Bus. We reached the school by 10:30 AM. Having arrived in the village, we first visited the school to meet and interact with children . It was quite an unexpected welcome that they gave, for I didn't expect that the entire school would be made to come out of their classrooms to become part of a welcome gathering. Many of the school teachers including the principal were out of the school for election training, still the school authorities had arranged a warm welcome for us. Following which we went into the classrooms to interact with the kids there. Then we had lunch at the house of a teacher in the school.

 


After the donation we divided our group of 17 people into groups of 2-3 and interacted with the students in the classrooms. They told us that after 10th they have to go to some other village for 12th. Only a few boys are willing to study after 12th. The girls students told us that they are coming to school because their parents are sending them. After the 15-20 minutes interactions we left the school for Lunch and had some group discussion among ourselves thereafter for some time to share our experiences.

This year, GRA endeavoured to spread technology developed in the CTARA department for improving the efficiency of the local chulha in the village we visited. The two houses which we chose to work in were selected by a teacher of the school. We set it up in two houses. Meanwhile the rest of us went around the village talking to the people there.


Post-camp Feedback Visit: Three of us (Sudhakar, Vishal and Vivek) went back to the village on 1st of February 2015 for feedback on the arrangement we had made for the chulha in the homes. They reported a reduction in smoke, wood consumption, soot deposition and cooking time. Further we then asked the teacher with whom we were collaborating to set up the arrangement in his house and record the time taken and wood consumption changes quantitatively. The results are awaited.