SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC AND EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY

Flood and Cylone relief - providing assistance to people affected by flood in 2006-07 and through the subsequent years.

SEEDS has played a role in reducing gaps in access to education among the poor children in many rural and tribal areas by providing catalytic support in various ways: School infrastructure assistance after natural disasters to prevent discontinuity in learning Adopt a Student program, bicycles for students for easier access to school Rural Math Talent Search (RMTS) and training camps for math talented students Scholarships for students. Reducing Digital Gap SEEDS is also introducing ‘appropriate technology’ in rural areas without the Internet to reduce the widening digital gap and improve access to information through its eLibrary initiative. The Mahatma Gandhi eLibrary is our most recent addition. In the words of Prof. Priyadarshan Patra, the creator of the eLibrary initiative: “eLibraries-in-a-box” systems and flexible components but have tried to keep it low cost, low-power, and low-footprint where computing or internet is scarce.

Pala, the ballad singing tradition of Odisha, is a unique form of performing art, which once occupied the space in coastal Odisha as a cardinal source of entertainment. It was a story telling tradition that combined music of classical and folk forms, comedy and drama, epic literature in Sanskrit and lucid metaphors in folk language, erudition with benighted comments, and synthesis of Islamic and Sufi tradition with Hindu tradition. The form which had dominated the scene once had to yield space to cinema and TV to the extent that it suffered near extinction. SEEDS has helped in the creation of a “cultural infrastructure”

The pandemic lockdowns caused severe loss of learning in the remote tribal areas of western Odissa where education was poor to begin with. Agragamee, an NGO in Nuapada, is intervening to bridge this gap by training youth volunteers of ages 15-17, who have completed 10th grade, to become Edu-volunteers, to work with children of ages 6-14 years by establishing Village Learning Centers, each center supporting 50 children from nearby communities. This effort has created a love of learning, joy in reading, and reduced fear and stress of going back to school in addition to catching up with the curriculum study.