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The 21st era is binding probes to handle work and lifestyle.
Most of the older generation and women aren’t acquainted with it’s usage. This has created a drift of thoughts between the generations.
Thus Vishwakarma Institute of Technology has opened it’s arms for the people who are eager to learn and gel in with these advancements in technology.
Those who couldn’t learn due to poverty and family issues or those who had formal education but not in computing, stand a chance here to update themselves.
‘Aatmabodh’ is a digital literacy program carried out since 2008. The pioneer and two subsequent renditions of Aatmabodh followed a tutorial at home so as to ease out the public and comfortably acquaint to the technology. Eventually the students felt that they we restricting themselves and could pull over a larger audience and impart knowledge. It thus paved the beginning of Aatmabodh in the college campus.
Along with the new spirits of January, Social Welfare and Development Committee of VIT unveils 28th rendition of Aatmabodh 2020 commenced on 21st of January.
This program is carried out on two levels ‘Basic’ and ‘Advance’ with a phenomenal individual mentoring experience.
The event takes place two hours a day for a period of twelve days. It witnesses a footfall of around 450 participants and 450 volunteers. 50 students are responsible for organisation of the event in 22 labs with 400 computers and 50 laptops.
The process begins with interviews of volunteers for organisation of Aatmabodh. Applications for these aren’t compulsory and students do the activity for contributing to society. These volunteers then publicized the event in college neighborhood by spreading awareness about digital literacy. To reach a wider audience, means of pamphlets, FM and newspapers are undertaken. Once the word is spread, the people willing to attend register for the event. Every participant is alloted one volunteer each, making it an ‘Each one teach one’ environment. The same volunteer is responsible to imbibe knowledge and cater towards their participant.
The syllabus ensures familiarisation with
computers and education to bridge the needs of evolving technology. The participants are acquainted with applications necessary in day to day life like, Zomato, Paytm, Mahavitaran, Digilocker, Uber eats, Amazon, Google maps, YouTube etc to tend to today’s needs. Completely illiterate people are also taught alphabets and numericals and consequently built up towards digitalising them. People working in offices have certain specific needs but cannot afford courses for the same. These people are taught specialized courses depending on their requirements such as Excel.
Junior Aatmabodh is a subset of the program for ensuring enhanced learning experience.
Women cannot leave their kids alone and thus bring them along for the workshop. Thus, to let them concentrate on the teaching learning process, their kids are looked after by our volunteers. They are taught the basics of computers and their necessity. Engaging them with tools like drawing and story telling cheers the kids. Kids are given life lessons through these short stories indeed making it a learning experience for them too.
Around 100 children upto 5th standard are looked after by the volunteers.
Aatmabodh is not just a literacy program, but an experience. Some withhold it as a reliving experience of their childhood and those who never went to schools add a leaf to their book of experiences. There are participants who have completed this program twice or thrice. They claim to learn new things every time. They also form a bond with the volunteer and keep in contact with them even later.
Ranjit Mengawade & Audumber Patil are student representatives heading the 28th Aatmabodh.
