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National Service scheme

AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNITY SERVICE

Objectives

Launched in the Mahatma Gandhi Birth Centenary year 1969, as a student youth service programme, National Service Scheme (NSS) aims at arousing social consciousness of the youth with an overall objective of personality development of the students through community service.

Motto

"Not me, but you"

Duration

Two years

Programmes

* Special camping ( 10 days ) * Regular activities ( community work ); 120 hours in a year

Activities

* Improvement of campuses * Tree Plantation * Constructive work in adopted villages and slums * Work in welfare institutions * Blood donation * Adult and non-formal education * Health, nutrition, family welfare, AIDS awareness campaigns * Construction of durable assets * Sustainable development with emphasis on wasteland development and watershed management.

Present Thrust Areas

A Camp of 10 day duration is conducted every year in an adopted village/slum on specific theme.

Composition of NSS Unit

One NSS unit consists of 100 student volunteers led by a teacher Incharge called "NSS Programme Officer"

Approach

NSS attempts to establish meaningful linkages between

* Campus and Community * College and Villages * Knowledge and action

Coverage

* States : All the states and union territories * Universities : 174 universities * Colleges : 7500 colleges and institutions of higher learning. * +2 Councils : 16 senior secondary council * Schools : 2000 senior secondary schools

Training

* Fourteen Training and Orientation Centres (TOC) * Four Training Orientation & Research Centres (TORC)

Liaison and Coordination

Each state has a liaison cell to monitor NSS programme in the state. Ministry of Youth Affairs has 15 Regional Centres to guide and help the states and universities in NSS programme implementation.

Funding

* Joint funding by the centre and the states in the ratio 7:5. * Full funding by centre for union territories and J&K state

Strength from the Past

* Over the years, NSS has made significant contribution in the field of literacy, disaster management, health and family welfare and environment. Special campaigns were launched on AIDS awareness, social evils, creating visible impact on the development process of the country. * NSS efforts made Kottayam town in Kerala the first total literacy town in India. * Under social forestory and wasteland development, 350 acres at sirsi in Karnataka in western ghats were developed with 3.5 lakhs saplings. In Orissa, 700 acres of denuded hills in Dhenkanal, 200 acres at Khurda and 250 acres in Rourkela were brought under plantation. In MHOW block of Indore district of Madhya padesh NSS has developed 14000 hectares of wasteland. Rawandera, a sleepy and semi-deserted village cluster in Alwar, Rajasthan has joined NSS in improving its environment and water conservation. In chandigarh, NSS volunteers desilted Sukhna Lake and saved it from degradation. 84,000 cubic feet silt was removed from the lake by NSS volunteers. NSS volunteers also removed hayacinth from the famous Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad. * During cyclone and flood in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam, NSS efforts in rescue, relief and rehabilitation earned appreciation from the public. * NSS undertook relief operation in Uttar Kashi and Latur and earned appreciation and recognisition. * In Bihar, Orissa, Kerala and Haryana thousands of shalters for shelterless have been constructed. * In Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir which shed enough blood in the past, now top in blood donation camps. * Such initiatives have been legion and almost all the universities and +2 level institutions have been contributing in a positive and constructive way to the society.

Current Initiatives

NSS launched a sensitisation campaign on AIDS awareness popularly known as "Universities Talk AIDS" (UTA) in collaboration with Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in all 174 universities all over the country.

Seventeen Lifestyle Education Centres have been established to orient youth towards planned parenthood and healthy lifestyle.

More than 7,000 NSS Programme Officers and 55,000 Peer Educators have been trained on AIDS Education.

5,820 colleges of higher learning and +2 level institutions have been declared AIDS Aware with more than 5.6 million student population.

WHO headquarters, Geneva has termed UTA as an innovative educational intervention. A National level quarterly Newsletter "YOUTOPIA" is also published regularly.

NSS is striving to make NSS as third dimension of higher education. NSS is working for integrated development of adopted villages and slums through its regular and special camping programmes. This will develop youth to bring fruits of education and technology to reach the weaker sections of the society.