By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: NSS volunteers of the SOA Deemed to be University participated in a plethora of Covid-19 centric activities during the last five months including awareness campaigns, virtual conferences and relief distribution.
As the pandemic took the state in its swirl, the NSS Programme Coordinator Dr. N.K.Sharma and Programme Officers (PO) made efforts to register all volunteers, both regular and self-financing, under the Arogya Setu and Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT). The POs also took part in all webinars and Zoom meetings organised by both the national and state level NSS authorities.
Altogether 31 unit wise webinars were conducted on the theme ‘NSS: Role in Covid-19’ between August 20 and September 1 which turned out to be massive exercises on creating awareness among the volunteers and motivating them to don the role of covid warriors when needed. Over1300 volunteers, POs, Deans of different institutions and others participated in the webinars.
As many as 14 webinars were held on June 5, the World Environment Day. The NSS volunteers also participated in singing ‘Vande Utkal Janani, a statewide programme held on May 30.
The University’s NSS Programme Coordinator Dr. Sharma and Dr. Sovan Pattanaik also took part in the five-day webinar organised by Mahatma Gandhi National Centre for Rural Education.
The NSS volunteers undertook relief distribution in ten slums in and around the SOA campus in the third week of April providing the people dry food and masks. They also participated in all national level programmes to promote social distancing norms. A Yoga Week culminating on June 21, the International Yoga Day, also drew over 250 participants who were trained in yoga with the theme ‘Yoga at Home and Yoga with Family’.
Besides, a webinar on ‘Unnat Bharat Abhiyan’ was held on August 29 with Prof. Ashok Kumar Mahapatra, SOA Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Mahavir Panda and Dr. Bibhu Kalyan Prasad Nayak from NIT, Rourkela, Dr. Jyoti Ranjan Das, SOA’s Dean (Students’ Welfare), Dr. N.K.Sharma and Dr. K.L.Mohanta being the panelists.
The SOA NSS organised ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat’ programme in collaboration with Abha Gaikwad College of Engineering, Nagpur on July 4 in which Prof. Ashok Kumar Mahapatra, Prof. Susmit Pani, former Director, DDCE, Utkal University, Dr. Bhaskar Mishra, Law Officer, Sri Jagannath Temple Administration, Dr. N.K.Sharma, Dr. Jyoti Ranjan Das and Dr. Sovan Pattnaik participated. The activities also included creation of soft resources like video, art, paintings and slogans on Covid-19.
Resource persons from SOA were invited as panelists in different TV News Channels on Covid-19 awareness while Odia articles on various scientific aspects of Coronavirus were published in newspapers.
