National Service Scheme (NSS) IIT Kharagpur

Midday meals at primary schools in and around Kharagpur are prepared mostly using fire wood.   With an objective of eliminating such a practice that disrupts the environment, IIT Kharagpur is funding procurement of three solar reflector ovens in the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan program.   An oven was procured in this initiative from PRINCE – Promoters, Researchers and Innovators in New and Clean Energy, of Dhule for evaluation at Upar Kenthia Primary School near Kharagpur for its usefulness in midday meal preparation.   Volunteers of Unit 6 finished its installation on March 25, 2017 and are currently trying to iron out initial teething problems.   Further, s ince primary schools of this region usually have no space for secure storage and installation of such equipment, Unit 6 and 8 volunteers guided by their Program Officers, Professors JN Roy and BM Manoj, are also trying to design a similar but folding system with a more efficient configuration and an automatic t...

Day 5 too continued with the road building work in the first half. Besides other work, we were happy to put the rain water pipe in place and build road over it, which we showed in our earlier post. The highlight of the day was the brainstorming session of the second half on "Unnat Bharat Abhiyan". Director, IIT Kharagpur and senior faculty fro Agriculture & Food Engineering Department and Rural Development Centre of IIT Kharagpur participated in the discussion. A presentation by NSS student volunteers through an innovative slide presentation method, adapted to open space in a rural surrounding was followed by opening remark of our Director and other faculty members. Then suggestion was sought from individual NSS volunteers. Director, IIT Kharagpur in his concluding remark summed up the action items for now. Some of them as noted down are: (i) Collecting all suggestions to start with and then filtering them. (ii) Collecting name and activities of the NGOs who are w...