Google awards Rs 3 crore to four non-profit organizations

Four non-profit organisations in India were chosen for their work and plans that focus on innovative use of technology to make the world a better place.
"Our aim is to encourage and help younger people with technology skills to aspire to change the world," says Google director of giving, Jacquelline Fuller, who touched down in Delhi to be part of the final round of the Google Impact Challenge, the second such programme launched by Google, the first one being in the UK earlier this year.
Non-profit organizations in India were invited to be part of the challenge that focused on innovative use of technology to drive social impact. From "thousands of applications" since its India launch in August, four organizations, including a 'fan favourite' -- Agastya, Digital Green, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship & Democracy and Social Awareness Newer Alternatives (SANA) respectively -- were selected for the awards. Ten of non-profits that were selected were invited to pitch their projects in front of a panel of judges. The four winners got Rs 3 crore each while the runners-up too have been awarded Rs 1.5 crore.
"The idea was to help non-profits that have a proven track record of accomplishing their goals," says Fuller giving the example of mobile labs to address the lack of science equipment and digital resources for rural children that swung the award in favour of the Bangalore-based Agastya.

Talking about it, Thiagrajan, chief operating officer of the 12-year-old organisation says, "Although we have already been taking mobile labs with about 100-150 science models to give children a hands-on experience, with this money, we plan to reach out not just to children but also teachers in remote villages."
Called TechLa Bike, it entails "a teacher driving a bike carrying a briefcase-like box with a number of mini models -- be it a microscope, ray projectors to understand the functioning and responses of light, etc -- to the interiors and make children there more digitally empowered," says Thiagrajan, an engineer who joined Agastya about four years ago. Over 65,000 children across Karnataka will benefit from this programme, he says.
Digital Green's project seeks to give useful information to small and marginal farmers through short digital films. "With about 2,600 of these in 20 different languages, we've already reached out to about 1,50,000 farmers in 2,000 villages," says Rikin Gandhi. With subjects as diverse as ways to improve agricultural production, making of vermicompost to how to connect with banks, Digital Green has plans to cover over 10,000 villages in the next few years.
"We get villagers themselves to make and produce these films that help not just in spreading awareness about different farming techniques etc to women, our target audience, who watch them on small projectors, but also gives these 'filmmakers' a new vocation. Many of these youngsters feel encouraged enough to make wedding and party videos too," smiles Gandhi.
Water and sanitation as an integrated model is what Delhi-based Sanchaita Gajapati Raju's SANA has been looking at. "We are already working in several villages purifying local water sources into WHO-standard drinking water. This is being done using solar-powered water-purification stations and not the conventional sources of energy," says Raju.
Now, she has plans for setting up bio-toilets in villages of coastal Andhra Pradesh that do not have a proper sewage network. "This will change the life of the people there considerably because the bio-gas that will be produced in the process will be used to light up the area and the water will be used for agricultural purposes," she adds.

Over the three years, with 54 million litres of drinking water and bio-digesting toilets being provided to ten villages, SANA promises to offer "improved health conditions for 25,000 people annually".
While three of the winners focus on rural India, the fourth in the list, Janaaagraha, aims to work in urban areas by creating online and mobile apps to bridge the gap between citizens and government representatives. "The idea is to make people more empowered through the use of technology," says Joylita Sardanha.
Talking about the 6,000 complaints her Bangalore-based organization has received since July, she says, 4,000 -- "these could be anything from garbage issues to open potholes" -- have already been resolved.
"With a team that's constantly helping in these follow-ups", Sardanha hopes that in the next three years, Janaagraha will connect 15,00,000 citizens to governments across three metropolitan cities in India. "Though we still have to finalize which ones we'll be working in, most probably Mumbai, Jaipur and Bhubaneshwar will be the chosen ones," she adds.