Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA organized the virtual event titled ‘Power of Education Forum’ on Saturday evening, April 10, 2021. Ekal Boston and Ekal San Diego brought this very inspiring event that was educational and featured a unique entertainment program.  The organization brings, literacy, digital literacy, health and skill training to over 100,000 rural remote villages. 

 The main goal of the program was to show case how Ekal as an organization along with schools and villages has adapted, continued, and innovated new ways to continues its development programs in rural areas, in the face of unprecedented challenges imposed by the pandemic. The pre-event featured testimonials from volunteers.

Mr. Neeraj Chandra, Ekal Volunteer welcomed all the special guests and the audiences to the event. Ms. Ranjani Saigal, the Executive Director, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation USA provided Ekal overview with video clippings in between that illustrated pictorially her statements.

Special speakers of the event who are the leaders in their respective fields of education and medicine shared their insights and ideas on how Ekal can shape its future efforts in order to uplift rural India through its education and holistic developments programs. Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean, Brown University, School of Public Health, USA and Prof. M.V. Padma Srivastava, Chief Neurosciences Center, AIIMS, India spoke on the public and mental health issues and how to handle them. Both encouraged people to participate in the vaccination drive and follow all the regulations, maintain social distancing, and wear masks when going out. Dr. Meena Subramanyam, Vice President & Global Program Leader at Takeda Oncology moderated this informative health care session very diligently.

Dr. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, MIT Madras, India and Prof. Sanjay Sarma, Vice President for Open Learning, MIT, USA spoke on the importance of digital education and how developing new courses that helps student to think not memorize the answers. This thought-provoking conversation was moderated meticulously by Dr. Subra Dravida, VP of Technology with Qualcomm.

 Ms. Pratibha Goyal from Ekal San Diego talked about the progress of Ekal in India and Ms. Neha Mittal, Ekal Youth leader said that with the help of may volunteers they are able to introduce and execute Ekal programs in India. The audiences are entertained in between the serious discussions with some unique music pieces created LEAP INDIA for Ekal that showed how various programs are launched in India to help villagers. Another beautiful and inspiring epic song on Ekal called “Ekal Gaatha” was presented to display how Ekal is working in India

Dr. Arun Gupta spoke on the Ekal new initiatives and Mr. Suresh Iyer spoke on the plans to scale Ekal model to greater level of excellence. The program ended with  a rap by A'Niche an excellent musical entertainment piece.

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