partners in village empowerment program of the ganga trust

repaid using the corpus of the program.This will enable us reach out to more villages than would be the case, if we go it on our own.

Our endeavour is to have a physically-challenged persons champion the initiatives at the village level, as that would provide them a source of modest income (via the salary paid byThe Ganga Trust) and also create a higher degree of social acceptance for them. Access to the facility will be provided for a nominal charge. This could vary from place to place depending on the local socioeconomic dynamics. The idea is to generate funds, and create a culture of paying for services as well.This will also help in managing the facility in an orderly manner.

For starters, we have identified Minnur, a small village near Ambur in Tamil Nadu, as the first stop for the program. A suitable person Minnur Mahadevan, a paraplegic who is small businessman doing good community work - and place in Minnur have been identified. We hope to have the facility up and running on January 1, 2012. The Partners in Village Empowerment Program of The Ganga Trust is aimed at

providing access to technology, information and books to remote villages. support for physically challenged persons in villages, especially in education and in obtaining relevant assistive devices.

Through this program,The Ganga Trust hopes to:

enable children in these areas learn at least the basics of computers facilitate access to Internet

This plan of action may be modified based on our experience. Our experience in supporting rehabilitation of physically challenged persons over the past 18 months has highlighted the need for a willingness to learn, modify, go slow at times and adopt an approach that involves the community.We intend to take this learning to the Partners in Village Empowerment program.

When we do this initiative, we also intend to ask the person selected to monitor the status of physically challenged persons, especially children in the area. If they need support in education or for assistive devices,The Ganga Trust intends to do the needful.

ensure children get access to relevant education materials

help people in the villages to read regional newspapers and magazines online

try and have each child set up an email ID and a social media ID set up a library with books and magazines in physical form

provide access to games and entertainment that is available online

provide a one-stop place for information on government services, which are increasingly available online

We would go through this process in a measured manner, especially in the first year, as we need to get the right people involved. Our idea is also get support from banks in these areas, so that we can source part of the funding via loans, which would be