NIT Rourkela Technical Society’s Club, AIChE conducted “NAVDHARA- A Rural Development Outreach Program”
Rourkela: American Institute of Chemical engineers (AIChE), a club under the Technical Society at Student Activity Centre, NIT Rourkela successfully conducted “NAVDHARA – A Rural Development Outreach Program”, from January 3-18, 2021. This virtual event was the first-ever event of its kind conducted by a club of NIT Rourkela and saw large participation from all over India and even from overseas.
“The main aim of our event was to connect with the science background students to explain them the problems that our rural India faces and encourage or motivate them to work for the upliftment of the rural society as people generally tend to focus on jobs and we tend to forget the Rural Development. We posted a lot of content like Blogs, Short Videos, Monologues, Infographic Contents, etc through our social media handles like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter so that we are able to convey our message to a greater audience.” – Abhishek Agrawal, President, AIChE Student Chapter, NIT Rourkela.
The club got connected to a lot of students across India and explained them about rural development program and the benefits it can bring to the society. A variety of events such as blog writing, poster designing, industrial design, problem solving ideas and webinars related to rural development were conducted so it can encourage the students to discover new ideas and research on ideas which can cause the Rural Upliftment. These events saw huge participation from students and led to a culmination of talents and sharing of innovative ideas. The program also focused on budding Engineers to think about Entrepreneurship in the field of Rural Development and hence it had “Koel Fresh Limited” as its Industrial Partner which is a agro-based start-up by Mr. Ashutosh Nayak, an alumnus of NIT Rourkela. Mr. Nayak shared many insightful ideas to the audience about how can we contribute to the rural society through start-ups. The webinar also had guest lecture by Ms. Kehkashan Basu (Founder of Green Hope Foundation and enlisted in Forbes 30 under 30) which were really inspiring for the young audience. She explained about her struggle as a young social activist and how Rural Development is one of the Sustainable Development Goals of our society.
The problem solutions given by the participants were very informative, innovative and insightful. They presented many ideas which can uplift the rural society at a very minimal cost. The perfect use of science in a very efficient way was showed in these solutions. All the events were conducted online successfully and the participants were more than satisfied with the preparations. AIChe thanked professors Prof. Adhidesh Kumawat and Prof. Suverna Trivedi for their continuous backing throughout the event. The Student Activity Centre, NIT Rourkela played a very important role and provided an instrumental support for the event. Pantomime, The Dramatics Club of NIT Rourkela and SDG Campus Club of NIT Rourkela also helped in this initiative by joining hands for collaborations for monologue and webinar respectively.