Ragini Murarkaa, president of Ekals Raleigh chapter told the story of her father who had to miss the school if there was a flood. Her father got educated and helped in improving the whole. Ragini stressed that there is power in 'one' and when a person gets educated and empowered, he can improve the whole village. 'One' person can help in educating the childrens of a whole village.
Dr. Basant K Tariyal, CEO of Ekal Global spoke and explained effectiveness of the contributed dollars through Ekal. He mentioned that in US, it is typical to have 50% overhead in charity organization. However, Ekals overhead is less that 10%. 90% of the money goes to helping beneficiary, which is very rare in US. He mentioned that he is a CEO with negative salary!! He has to spend his money to travel around. He said that he is enjoying his work and he his much happier as he is part of largest literacy movement in India. He requested others to help Ekal by volunteering and/or with monetory contributions.
He said 'Indian Americans are the richest community. Main reason is the education. My son in US pays $150,000 for his bachelors, however my education at IIT was almost free!! Offcourse, nothing comes free. I took a bigger pie from overall education budget and other people paid for my education. I owe it back to the community. Same is true for most of us here. We benefitted and we should it give back'.
Harish Mathur, Regional president of Ekal, spoke at the end and mentioned that Ekals Raleigh chapter has raised contributions to support 135 Ekal schools. He requested others to come forward to help great education movement.
About Ekal Vidyalaya:
The Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation is a charitable trust that initiates, supports, and runs non-formal one-teacher schools (popularly known as Ekal Vidyalayas) all over the country. With the participation of numerous non-profit trusts and organizations, this program has now become the greatest non-governmental education movement in the country.
The Ekal Vidyalaya movement aims to help eradicate illiteracy from rural and tribal India by 2011. Ekal Vidyalaya is a movement of over 26,719 teachers, about 5,000 volunteers scattered in 22 Indian states. With this tremendous human force, the Ekal Vidyalaya movement strives to create a network of non-formal schools that will educate and empower children in rural and tribal India.
The donors, supporters and workers of Ekal Vidyalaya are motivated by a commitment to educate our illiterate brothers and sisters. Their unflinching dedication to serve their motherland is the key to our success.
Please visit
www.ekal.org
to learn more and contribute to the greatest education movement.
Here is video with shots of kids prayer, a bhajan and a ghazal -
Here is video of just tabla playing. Ashok Pandey imitated a running horse, back ground music for war in Mahabarath..
Few old Hindi songs..
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