Giving Back

1/  Social Innovations

1  Goonj:  Slides  

• Started in 1998 with 67 personal clothes, GOONJ is channelising over 70,000 kgs of material every month.
• GOONJ has its own offices in seven cities and voluntary set-ups in few other cities. Implementation in different parts of 21 states, working with over 250 partner groups including Indian Army, Ashoka Fellows, social activists, Panchayats etc.
• A five member governing body, over 300 volunteers-spread all over, headed by Anshu Gupta, an Ashoka Fellow, as the Founder Director of GOONJ.

2/ Akshaya Patra   : Unlimited food for Education : AWards
   the world’s largest NGO -run mid-day meal program    
 Enabling Hunger free Education for nearly 1.3 million Children in India

1/  My own Ideas

India:
  1/ Educate scientists about Python usage to better their research

 1.2/ Infosys/TCS: can have in-house food expert and suggest diets to employees etc.  using internal  Website graphically explaining what each food does in the digestive process.  For that matter every US company can provide those services ..

  2/ collages/school kids: teach computer  languages early
       - use MIT Python Video courses ( save youtube video to DVD player and play in class room to avoid Net connection/slow issues ) . Use Khan Academy lessons saved as DVD for  remote Village neighbourhood kids , for this remote village schools  tieup with local schools such as GMR schools in Vizag remote villages ( so you can use existing schools to teach these concepts ).
      - have clubs to pay for course and pay student who teach ( to encourage best teaching )
      - have PDF print out of Python ( and other lang. ) for students to study at home ( no Ad pages on computer )
     -  encourage to use  SciPy and other python math packages ...

 3/ set up clubs in school/collage:  be  be top 10% of your passion ( chess , ping-pong , debate , .... )

4/ Set-up computer labs in school/collages:
 - Accept old PCs/Laptop from US/UK etc.. and  people donation of their PCs are shown in which village they are used ( on website so people know it )
 - educate indian IT employees to donate their TIME in  settting up Labs and teaching On-Line coures and being mentors .


US :
  - Fruit a day program at US schools: tie up with local Farasm for season based fruits   Watermelon, peach , plums , cucumber , ...