The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Alpha students win accolades at meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 25, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Alpha students win accolades at meet

Staff Reporter

Projects to address rural problems fetches them third place

The Alpha team posing with the trophy.

CHENNAI : Their pursuit to empower rural people won accolades for students of Alpha Arts and Science College at the SIFE World Cup 2006.

A team of students from different departments of Alpha got an opportunity to think beyond their academic activity a few months ago. Their community projects ensured that they moved from the regional level to the national and finally emerge third among 46 teams that participated at the international level.

The team of Arunthati Ramanathan, R.S.Sindu, D.Deepak, V.B.Rajakumar and P.Krishna Chaitanya presented projects that sought to address rural economic problems at the Students in Free Enterprise World Cup held at Paris, France on September 13 sponsored by leading IT company, Syntel.

The presentation revolved around empowering Palmyra juice tappers, promoting sericulture as an alternative occupation for farmers and giving jobs for rural women.

The team members did not have much knowledge about business ethics or entrepreneurship before the outreach projects came into their college life.

Ms. Arunthathi said, "The projects that we took up for the competition has transformed us into responsible citizens." For Deepak, who is a final year student of computer science, it has opened a new career avenue. For others, the contest provided a learning experience.

Faculty advisor Josephine Jeyashanthi helped the team get licences for Palmyra juice tappers who had been arrested by police. Now they have a stable income through establishing a co-operative society.

About 50 farmers benefited from the project that suggested sericulture as an alternative occupation. The students also succeeded in marketing herbal bread spread from aloe vera, `Nutriva' manufactured by rural self-help group. This raised economic standard of families dependent on it.

Fortynine judges representing corporate world judged the presentations.

Grace George, chairperson of the college said this was the first time that India has won laurels in the contest since its inception in 1975.

SIFE organised the event to give college students a chance to apply their theoretical knowledge to solve community problems and learn teamwork and communication skills.

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