Ratanpar village visit by students of Marwadi University

Bestowing knowledge to students is the primary objective of MEFGI, but any knowledge is incomplete without practical experiences and learning the real-life chapters. This motivation led the NSS Team at MEFGI to organize a village visit to a Ratanpar village in Rajkot, spanning from 9^th March 2018 to 15^th March 2018.

These seven days provided the students a wider perspective of the lifestyle that is adopted by the villagers, their living habits, community knowledge and a way to be adaptive in all the situations.

This village camp was led by Prof. Charmin Jarsaniya, Programme Officer and Assistant Prof. Vishal Sorathiya, Programme Officer with a team of 39 student volunteers. These volunteers included students from all branches and all semesters, showing great enthusiasm to be a part of this experience.

Here’s a brief on the chain of activities that made this village camp worth a learning and enjoyable experience for the students organized by one of the best universities in Gujarat.

• Orientation Program to embark the village visit by introducing the objective and vision behind the village visit.
• Interaction with the Villagers and Panchayat representatives to get a complete insight of the village and place a stepping stone in building a relationship with the people of the village.
• All the volunteers of the Marwadi University took a walk around the village exploring the streets, houses and basic amenities and finding ways in which they can be improved.
• Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was carried out by the volunteers covering almost all the parts of the village in order to give a clean and better place to the villagers.
• Each day of the village visit was kick-started with the Yoga sessions by the budding achievers of Marwadi University.
• Drawing competition was held for the students of the village, followed by distribution of drawing books, crayons, and sketch pens to encourage the artists present in the students.
• After spreading awareness about the importance of blood donation, a blood donation camp was organized for the people of the village to contribute to this noble cause.
• Farming & agriculture knowledge was provided by the farmers of the village that gave students information about the crops grown in that village and different techniques used.
• Serving polio vaccines door to door to over 160 houses, the volunteers got an opportunity to contribute to spread awareness about the polio vaccination.
• Tree plantation: A step towards nature preservation was carried out in the village school and orphanage.
• Marwadi University students interacted and shared their knowledge with the children of the village school.
• Thalassemia check-up campaign was done for the people of the village from the age group of 15 to 35 years.
• A session on women empowerment was taken by the NSS girl volunteers spreading light on educating a girl child and rights of women.
• One day was dedicated to sports activities for the students of the school with various games such as cricket, badminton, musical chair, etc.
• Introducing various technological devices such as personal computer, mobile, software, etc. to the school students
• The volunteers visited the playhouse to meet the kids and the people working there.

This visit was successfully completed with a closing ceremony giving a note of thanks to the people of the village, the volunteers and the key personnel of the Marwadi University.