Ekal Vidyalaya has set up eight Gramothan Resource Centres (GRCs) in different remote places in Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, U.P, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. These GRCs serve as resource centres for about 100 villages surrounding the centre. The main aim of these GRCs is to make the village community economically self-reliant and develop villages as centres of economic activity. The idea is very similar to the idea of PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) promoted by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and adopted by Govt. of India. The main focus remains on knowledge, electronics and economic connectivity to 100 villages.

To uplift and empower the underprivileged sections of rural and tribal villages of India, Ekal proposes various interventions for 30 village clusters under its project called ‘Integrated Village Development’. The interventions are cohesive and address all the major issues/problems affecting the progress of rural villages.

The main activity of the GRCs is to motivate and educate the villagers to adopt eco-friendly life, train farmers on organic farming and high-value crops, provide skill development training to youth and women for better livelihood, husbandry and promoting agro-based local entrepreneurship. The training to farmers is imparted for organic farming through production and use of vermin compost and organic pesticides, commercial crops, tools for packaging and marketing, water conservation etc.

Apart from training to farmers, new skills are imparted to unemployed/under-employed tribal/ rural youth and school dropouts for tailoring, computer data input, tube well and tractor repairs, electric motor winding, carpentry etc. The objective of imparting these skills is to make the youth self-reliant with rural entrepreneurial skills so as to earn livelihood in the vicinity of their villages and avoid urban migration.

Tailoring Training is an initiative to empower rural women through micro-entrepreneurship. We teach women how to sew clothes and connect them to large-scale market opportunities, increasing both earning potential and self-confidence. Tailoring trainees participate in a three-month training at a local Gramothan (Village Development) Resource Center. Training is led by expert instructors and taught in the local language. Next, trainees can choose from a variety of opportunities to share their skills with the world and earn a substantial income while doing so.

Ekal Canada website: https://ekal.ca/

A contribution of CAD $500 helps run one Ekal school for an entire year, educates 30 children and has a positive impact on 30 rural families. Ekal runs over 90,000 schools that educate 2.6 million children in rural, remote parts of India. Ekal Canada is a registered Canadian charity / non-profit organization engaged in the education of tribal, indigenous children in rural India and Nepal. It is the largest grassroots movement of its kind in the world.

Ekal Foundation in numbers (present day):-

92,175 schools in rural and tribal areas

2,639,821 total students

1,316,096 boys are currently enrolled

1,323,725 girls are currently enrolled