SHE IS THE FORCE THAT’S INSPIRING THE NATION AND THE WORLD.
The woman you see here is Rohini Nilekani, wife of Infosys CEO, Nandan Nilekani. But more important, she is a woman with strong beliefs about how one can “give back to the society in small measure what one receives in such abundance”. A former journalist and author of probably India’s first medical thriller on the lines of Robin Cook, Stillborn, she heads an organization Arghyam, which is doing path-breaking work in water management and most of it can be attributed to her vision.
Type: Article
They read better today
More than 95 per cent of 69,800 children in government schools can read better today; 45,000 children who could not read before can now read without any hitch. The 45-day accelerated reading programme, conducted jointly by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Akshara Foundation across primary classes in over 1,400 government schools in Bangalore, has done wonders for children.
Announcing the results of this highly-successful programme, primary and secondary education minister Basavaraj Horatti said; “We will now take this programme across the state. People expect the government to solve sill problems, but they must learn from organisations like Akshhra Foundation which has joined hands with us to tackle this problem of poor reading skills among government school children.”
Akshara’s Karnataka Learning Partnership a runaway success
95 per cent hit on improving reading skills.
THE Karnataka Learning Partnership, a public-private initiative by Akshara foundation and the Education Department, Government of Karnataka and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, on Thursday presented the findings of its reading programme conducted across 1309 government primary schools in Bangalore.
Prajaa Vaani – Kannada
Prajaa Vaani – Kannada
eenaadu.net – Vasundhara – Telugu
eenaadu.net – Vasundhara – Telugu
Planning for cities of the future
ALL ACROSS the cities of India, citizens grapple every day with the multifold outcomes of rapid change and increasing crowds. We complain, we sigh, and sometimes we express our rage. Yet, in our hearts, each one of us holds some vision for the city in which we have tried to make our home.
Surely we all want our city, whether it is a megalopolis or an emerging town, to .be cleaner and greener, more convenient, less noisy, more like it was in the good old days, a better place to raise our children and more, much more?
Learning the Art of Giving
For Rohini Nilekani, making the money was the easy part. The Bangalore-based wife of Infosys CEO Nandan
Nilekani, Rohini owns 1.67% of the Indian outsourcing company, and her personal fortune soared to about $300 million along with the meteoric rise of its stock. She calls her windfall “a quite frightening amount of money.” And as soon as it started rolling in, the social activist and journalist began to look for ways to give enormous sums away.
That’s been the hard part. With little guidance available for the country’s would-be Rockefellers, Nilekani became a self-taught philanthropist, building two foundations from the ground up. So far, she has provided a total of $37 million to Akshara Foundation, which is dedicated to education, and the Arghyam trust, which tackles water
issues.
Praja Vaani – Kannada
Praja Vaani – Kannada
Akshara Foundation presented Rotary award – Kannada
Foundation chairperson Rohini Nilekani accepts the award.
Ms. Nilekani said the foundation, as part of the Pratham Network, believed in giving underprivileged children the opportunity to learn and thereby empower them to take advantage of several more opportunities available for the educated.
Achievers – Rohini Nilekani – Kannada
Achievers – Rohini Nilekani – Kannada