Swami Rama, Founder of Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust, felt the need to address the concerns of rural mountain people. To this end he established the Rural Development Institute (RDI) to act as a hub to ensure holistic development addressing health, education, income generation, and water and sanitation. RDI reaffirms its commitment of service in tune with Love-Serve-Remember toward rural transformation. Over 30 years the Institute has served over 10 lakh rural population residing in the interiors of the Himalayas. To commemorate RDI Foundation Day, various programs and ceremonies were conducted at different places on September 20-21, 2019.
RDI has been successful in changing the life of 2,00,000+ women, 19,000+ children, 11,00,000+ adolescents, 11,00,000+ secondary stakeholders and 11,000+ people with disability. RDI has been designated as a nodal agency at national and state level in areas of health, adolescent health, water and sanitation on different occasions.
RDI Foundation Day celebrations started on 20th September with lighting the lamp and distribution of prasad to all staff and visitors to RDI. This occasion was marked by inauguration of “Asha Certificate Course” by the Vice Chancellor Shri Vijay Dhasmana, Swami Rama Himalayan University (SRHU) and online commencement of the course for Tehri district. This course has been designed to empower volunteers and health workers who are interested and enthusiastic for improving healthcare services; especially mother and child health and reproductive health services. Besides providing health based knowledge, the course offers scope of building core values and skills among the learners. Vice Chancellor, SRHU congratulated RDI for the course. Apron and literary materials were felicitated to the participants of this course. RDI staff who have been involved in formulating booklets, promoting course and field mobilization were acknowledged by Vice Chancellor, SRHU.
This was followed by inauguration of RDI’s Books Project. The Books Project is about the refinement and updation of existing booklets and literary resources of RDI, especially regarding Asha certificate course, adolescents’ peer educators module and mother and child health.
Besides in-house celebrations, the day also observed celebrations at different places. One such event was organized at Malethi ashram school of Pauri district in which stationery and sports kits were distributed among children. Similarly in another event RDI Foundation Day was celebrated at Gurukul Navprabhat Vedic Vidyapeeth in Bargarh district of Orissa State wherein girls participated in silence, yoga and screening of an inspirational film on Swami Rama as well as stationary distribution. Similar events of distribution of educational materials and sweets to children were organized in Andhra and Gujarat also. The day concluded with yoga workshop with children and adolescents.
The second day (21.9.19) celebrations of RDI Foundation Day included visiting students from different departments like management, skill school, paramedics of SRHU and exposure to RDI activities. Students were told about Swamiji’s vision of reaching out to remote mountainous regions of Uttrarkhand through RDI and how RDI has been making efforts to translate the same. They were shown educational and motivational films and songs produced by media wing of RDI.
In another activity a workshop on career, science promotion and scholarship distribution was organized with youth.
On this occasion a school health camp was organized at primary school, Jolly Grant in which health check up and growth monitoring was done for over 40 children and medicines were provided. Books were also provided to the school.
Another activity of celebration was done with women at Nagthat, a hilly area of Dehradun district in Kalsi block, in which over 60 women of nearby villages participated.
Media wing of RDI released its new series of film clips on RDI initiatives in music, school project and books project and audio programs on breastfeeding, menstrual hygiene management (MHM) and adolescent nutrition, as well as autism.
