Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Round Table India to celebrate golden jubilee

M. Dinesh Varma

Aims to build 1,500 classrooms to reach out to 30 lakh children this year

Shivkumar Eashwaran

CHENNAI: This Saturday, members of Round Table India will toast the organisation's golden jubilee in the city where it was launched in India — Chennai.

Almost 30 years after the movement was launched in the U.K., Englishman John Barton, a former Rotarian, founded the Round Table here. It has since grown to comprise 185 Tables across 100 cities and towns in the country.

The commissioning of 10 golden jubilee blocks at Saidapet Government School during the groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday will symbolise the essence of the organisation's campaign in the country.

The `Freedom Through Education' capacity building campaign has been both the rallying call and defining feature of 2,600 Tablers associated with the organisation. After building 4,200 classrooms across 1,000 schools, to benefit half-a-million children in a eight-year campaign which cost Rs.75 crore, the organisation has set itself the golden jubilee goal of building 1,500 classrooms and reaching out to 30 lakh children. The golden jubilee development drive will go on up to November 14, 2007.

"In a country where an estimated 100 million children do not go to school and only four out of 10 children reach the eighth grade, Round Table India resolved to build its agenda around this education crisis," said Shivkumar Eashwaran, the Chennai-based National President of the organisation.

A lot of expectations are pinned on the `Freedom Through Education Plus' project, which is in the pilot phase in Bangalore. The project, done in association with Bangalore-based Edurite, involves making school education more of a visual experience through the use of computers and customised software packages.

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