AID RURAL TECHNOLOGY CENTER, ORISSA UPDATES

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AID RURAL TECHNOLOGY CENTER, ORISSA (UPDATES)

• ANKUR GUPTA
• SASTRY VADLAMANI
• SRIKANTH SAMAVEDAM

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AGENDA

• OVERVIEW
• UPDATES (based on conference call)
• QUESTIONS

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OVERVIEW

• Motivation to assist poorer communities of rural
  Orissa by working directly with them.
• ARTRC as a centralized resource to avail and
  disseminate appropriate technologies, techniques
  etc. to the rural people in the region.
• JITM (situated in Gajapati district) to support
  the activities of the center.
• Dhanada Mishra, Ravi Kuchimanchi, Aravinda have
  taken up faculty roles Peter Bakos to
  co-ordinate ARTRC.
• Gajapati district statistics hilly and rocky
  terrain, less than 40 cultivable land, 70 saura
  tribals and 15 dalits, 90 of population in
  villages, 60 landless.
• Some of the technologies/ techniques recently
  initiated in the area- Bio Fuel Technology to
  electrify villages, nursery of forest and fruit
  trees, Hand Pressed Mechanical Interlocking Block
  Technology, Ferro Cement boats.

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OVERVIEW

• Amended proposal JITM experience New line item
  for relocating the center outside the campus-
  Land (Rs. 3,00,000), Development (Rs. 50,000) and
  Borewell (Rs. 30,000).

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UPDATE

• Based on Conference call between Navin Rustagi
  (AIDNM) and Dhanada Misra which took place on
  12th of November Broadly classified into three
  sections Infrastructure, Current/ Past
  Activities and General.
• Infrastructure
• 1- 3 acre of land bought
• 2- further expansion plans
• 3- The construction/ renovation  of a building
  (located inside the college campus) almost
  completed

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UPDATE

• Current/ Past  Activities
• 1- Plumbing training/ maintenance program
  successfully conducted
• 2- 60,000 Fly-ash interlocking blocks made
  primarily for use on campus
• 3- Experimentation with crops underway
  (Vermicomposting)

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UPDATE

• 4- Continued activities (sewing, stitching and
  organic farming)
• 5- Other training programs in the pipeline (mats
  from grass, hand paper activity, screen printing
  and bamboo products)
• 6- Work on second set of calendars/ cards to
  start soon7- Commitment from some AID
  volunteers ( Ravi Kuchimanchi, Aravinda, Balaji,
  Ravishankar, Alok Sharan, Prasad Subramaniam,
  Alok Mallick)

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UPDATE

• General Discussions
• 1- Training programs- dynamic and will depend on
  the response which ARTRC gets after trying out
  some
• 2- Possibility to fall back upon the list of
  activities of an NGO Udhyog Vikas
• 3- Some talks with farmer's groups underway

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QUESTIONS