The Mission: Infuse information and resources directly into the schools in order to
enable, encourage, and inspire students, in particular those with weaker social and/or economic background, without any discrimination of their social, religious, or cultural backgrounds.
Motivation: Societies around the world are far better today than a century ago. However, even today there is corruption, violence, greed, fanaticism, environmental pollution, etc., which are driving many cultures and societies into sub-animal behaviors. Dr. Murthy S. Gudipati has been thinking about this aspect for the several decades, seen half the world, and lived in three continents. He is convinced that a permanent transformation of future humanity to lead “higher quality” life – in harmony among each other and with other life on Earth – and leave a better Earth for the next generations is only through “Education”. More children in their formative years get formal education on mathematics, science, geology, geography, astronomy, music, and sociology, more future citizens have the knowledge, information, and the ability to “think before acting”. This is the hope for social and cultural transformations in the future. Unfortunately, many parts of the world, including India do not have effective educational programs at the “roots” of the society – those places where children have no access to information, inspiration, and mentoring to be educated. Many of these children end up in the cycle of suppression and violence. The Idea of NSNY is to bring inspiration, information, and mentoring to these underserved children through personal involvement of students/scholars/teachers/entrepreneurs at their hometowns/villages – hence Nurture the Schools that Nurtured You (NSNY).
History: La Canada, California, March 2013: The NSNY project is an outgrowth of the vision of Dr. Murthy S. Gudipati that resources need to be brought to every tiny root of the society, in particular those with weaker social and/or economic background to enable, encourage, educate, and empower future citizens of the world. This was developed over a few months through discussions with Dr. Gaj Birur, his colleague at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a fellow IISc alumnus who successfully implemented educational programs in Rural India through the Birur Educational Foundation for Children (BEFC). The concept is that if each of us does small bits of voluntary work within our ability in a coordinated way – similar to passing the stones to build a monument – the achievements would be significant and far reaching. The NSNY concept also takes into account “motivation” behind each individual to see that every schoolchild gets opportunities to learn and thrive just like the donor or the volunteer herself/himself. Student/Scholar Volunteers are the heart and engine of this project.
Model: Inspire, Inform, Educate, and Enable (I2E2) “underserved children at schools” through personal example, involvement, information, and motivation. Form a chain of people, each contributing a small part in a coherent way to bring the resources to the roots of the society. The key players are the volunteers who mentor schools in their hometowns or other places.
A donor is motivated by her/his grateful indebtedness to her/his school where she/he was nurtured as a child. A volunteer is motivated to see that her/his work enables, encourages, educates, and empowers students, particularly those with weaker social and/or economic background, who otherwise would have dropped out of school and followed the footsteps of their parents. The volunteers could use the time when they visit their family during vacation time, so that they do not compromise their academic pursuits. The bridge would be the Indian Institute of Science Alumni Association of North America (IIScAANA) or other such organizations on one side (the donor organization), and Indian Institute of Science and its infrastructure such as the Alumni Association (IIScAA), the NoteBook Drive, etc., or similar educational or voluntary non-profit organization on the other side.
This NSNY movement can only be successful if there are dedicated volunteers, who explicitly avoid propagating their personal beliefs, political and religious affiliations, and other biases to the children. Give them the education and empower them to be better-informed citizens of the future civilization.
Operations: IIScAANA has dedicated volunteers who are providing and willing to provide financial and to some extent human resources. IISc Note Book Drive (a student organization at IISc) has excellent student body. Some of these students are presently exploring the NSNY program at their hometown local schools. Presently Sridhar Pichaimuthu, Sushant Kumar, and Angshuman Modak are leading NSNY efforts from IISc (NBD). We need dedicated volunteers from every corner of India.
Once we are successful in India, we should use this model to other countries in the world.
About the Author: Murthy S. Gudipati (aka G. S. Murthy at IISc) is a Principal Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the evolution of organic matter and ice in the Universe, particularly the outer solar system, comets, and the potential origin(s) of life on Earth. He worked at the University of Texas at Austin, at the University of Cologne, Germany, University of Maryland, College Park, and at NASA Ames before joining JPL/Caltech in 2007. Murthy obtained M.Sc. at the Central University of Hyderabad (1981), Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science (1987), and Habilitation (similar to tenure) at the University of Cologne (1998). He stayed in almost all the Men’s Hostel Blocks, dined at all the three A-C Messes, ran a half-marathon, and developed life-long friendships during his 1981-1986 stay at one of the most beautiful campuses in the world – the IISc. His PhD research was recognized with “Guha Medal – Best Thesis Award”. Murthy is one of the founding members of the IIScAANA.
Born and raised in in Southern India, Murthy lived in interior villages to mega cities in three continents. He at times walked over four miles each way to attend upper primary schools from his village. This experience bonded him with nature and animals immensely. Murthy likes Nature and National Parks and he has organized several hiking and camping trips for IIScAANA. Murthy’s passion is to bring knowledge, information, and education to the next generation humans to enable the future civilizations to treat themselves and the Nature with respect. Murthy’s pursuit of Science is balanced by his interest in World Music, Nature, Vegetarian Cooking, and Philosophy.
This work by ClubSciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
