Friends Of Tribals Society “Ekal Sur Ekal Taal”
The Friends of Tribals Society (FTS) Bengaluru Chapter in association with Ekal Abhiyan has organized a musical cultural program Ekal Sur Ekal Taal to support goal of reaching further out to tribal & remote rural children.
This program will be performed by Ekal karyakartas who have been trained for 18 months and then last year they performed in 52 marvelous programs viewed by more than 22,000 people in 30 states of USA by travelling average 316 kilometer daily during their short 3 months visit to USA. Now they are continuing to present their shows in many cities of India & Bengaluru had organized the program on Sat 15th Sept, 2018 at Jnana Jyoti Auditorium, Central College Campus, Palace Road, 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm.
Presently at all India level They are running more than 75,000 Ekal Vidyalaya, serving over 20 lakhs children. In Karnataka, alone they have around 1470 schools with over 38,000 children in the districts of Mysore, Chamrajnagar, Hassan, Chikmagalur, Gulbarga, Bidar, Bagalkot, Gangavathi & Khanapur.
Speaking on the occasion Ramesh Agarwala (President, FTS Bangalore) averred, “We have been successful in devising an effective concept of One Teacher School (Ots) Or Ekal Vidyalaya. The children of a village who do not go to any school or even those who go to other schools, are given support education for 3 hours every day. We motivate the children to go to the schools and have succeeded in substantial reduction of the dropout rate in formal schooling”.
The 1st Ekal on Wheels Van for Karnataka and 19th overall in the country will be launched by senior executives of Yahoo Employee Foundation of India. This Van will operate in South Karnataka villages. It is an initiative that gives a big boost to Digital India program.
The goals & Objectives of the Project are:-
Mass Scale Digital Awareness & Literacy to the remotest places: Every child must get basic knowledge of computers. They further literate their elders. No villager should be unknown to computers.
Demystify Computers: The program will demystify computers to the children & youth who have remained untouched & unreached.
Financial Literacy: The program includes modules to teach varied applications related to financial literacy (netbanking, e-wallets et al).
Certification & employment opportunities: Certification program will make trainees eligible for varied employment opportunities.
Creating Micro – entrepreneurs: Their experience shows that many of the trainees start their own business after completing the training.
Friends of Tribals Society (FTS) an organization established in the year 1989 at Kolkata, by a group of social service workers, with a motive to help the people living in distant rural & tribal areas & to provide schooling for the underprivileged particularly in the field of education, health care, development, empowerment & culture. Friends of Tribals Society (FTS) is one of the biggest non -government voluntary social service organization of India working in tribal & rural areas. The motto of FTS is to not only improve socio economic condition of tribal society but also to free them from the clutches of deprivation that have for so long hindered the progress of the entire community.
EKAL’s mission is to eradicate illiteracy from rural areas, particularly amongst tribals, so that the people here can get access to basic education. Ekal’s mission is to uplift tribal villages by providing and creating awareness of Panchamukhi Shiksha (5 Dimensional Education) which consists Primary Education, Healthcare Education, Village Development Education, Empowerment Education & Value Education.
They work & run the schools completely on funds received as donation. The donated amount is utilized for payment of honorarium to Teachers, Full Time Workers & for purchasing teaching/study material. The donors are eligible for tax exemption under 80G of IT Act 1961 & FCRA.
With the support of volunteers & very low administration cost, they have been able to run this massive programme with an annual budget of only Rs 20,000/- per school.
