28 States Reached	800 Villages Covered	>65000 Adolescents Helped
>60000 Women Served		9000 Children Served

As envisaged by its founder, and in keeping with its mission, the University endeavours to “providing opportunities for social upliftment” while nurturing excellence in creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Therefore, the University also regularly helps underprivileged/ marginalised communities overcome difficulties across areas mainly, health, water & sanitation, besides contribution in education, livelihood, relief & rehabilitation, and other developmental concerns. This is often done in collaboration with its sister institution, namely, Rural Development Institute (RDI).

Engagement of Faculty and Students in Rural Initiative programs

University has offered various services to community with students from various disciplines participating in awareness campaigns, community surveys, health care, teaching & training in extra-curricular & other abilities of children in schools, relief work, annual plantation drives, Gramin Swachhta Abhiyan drives, etc. sometimes, also carrying out assignments/ projects on related topics.

Key contributions:

A. Health

The Institute focuses on women/ adolescents through Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), Tele- medicine and other initiatives. ASHAs play a significant role as link workers between community and health systems creating awareness among women on various health issues, mobilizing them to avail of institutional delivery and benefits of government schemes.

Due to lack of awareness many women do not have delivery in hospitals. Further, because of limited availability & accessibility of health services cum lack of sufficient number of paramedics & health professionals, young women do not get prompt health services during pregnancy & post-pregnancy.

To widen coverage of antenatal, natal, post natal, newborn and infant, University trained >12000 ASHAs across Uttrakhand. Maternal Child Health (MCH) intervention was focussed in Haridwar district. Quality Family Planning Services (QFPS) were also provided to married couples in neighbouring Doiwala block through a Mobile app & delivery of contraceptives at door-step.

Institution has also played a vital role in participation of adolescents in health programmes conducting Training of Trainers (ToT) as National Training Partner for Rashtriya Kishore Swasthya Karyakram Program, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare for senior officials in 31 States/ UT across India to sensitize adolescents on issues related to reproductive health, nutrition, life-style disorders, etc. Additionally, multi-specialist health camps are organised in Primary Health programs (PHP).

Outcome: While >65000 women, >10000 children, and >30000 adolescents benefitted from the MCH & Adolescent schemes, >90000 people benefitted through PHP & Telemedicine.

With help of ASHAs, the number of institutional deliveries rose sharply from about 63% NFHS4 to 80% in NFHS5, while minimum (at least 4) antenatal check-ups rose from 24% to 49%, and full vaccination rose from 69% to 94% during same period in Haridwar district.

The QFPS Mobile app program covered 31000 eligible couples in the block. The ToT covered 369 participants including doctors, administrative officers, & health leaders of the states.

B. Water & Sanitation

The objective is to improve community health through continuous water supply and sanitation services.

Himalayan area is water stressed despite being origin of Ganges & Yamuna. Due to lack of safe water nearby, women spend 3-4 hours daily to fetch water from great distances. Inadequate access to water, sanitation and hygiene services cause poor health, and also lead to open defecation.

To provide potable water and sanitation facilities, efforts have been made engaging village water sanitation-committees, Panchayati Raj Institutions, Self Help Groups, schools, and officials of various Govt. departments. Institution is also imparting Training to mid-level officials of relevant departments & Panchayati Raj functionaries across India under ‘National Jal Jeevan Mission’, a flagship program of Ministry of Jal Shakti, Govt of India. Other key areas of function/services are springshed management, rainwater harvesting, sanitation, including application of innovative water technologies, construction of Toilets, etc.

Outcome: Potable water and sanitation facilities have been provided to 185 villages. Water availability has increased to more than 55 liter per capita/person per day (LPCD). Practice of washing hands after defecation has increased from 15% to over 90% and incidence of diarrhoea /water borne diseases has reduced drastically. Villages are cleaner with construction of >3100 Toilets in 96 villages, garbage pit, soak pit and compost pit in select blocks in Tehri & Pauri. Construction of 309 Rainwater Harvesting Tanks in 21 villages was done, besides development of >55 hectare springshed area. So far >9000 participants have been trained including >7300 under Jal Jeevan Mission project"; 28 states of India have been covered.

C. Other areas of engagement

Education: Over the years, University set up >40 Libraries in schools at remote locations, runs 5 Centres for literacy offline/ online mode, has organised >40 vocational & personality development workshops, held Free Training on Home Stay setup to >200 people, has granted scholarships to hundreds of students, distributed scores of mobiles besides Teacher training support during Covid19, among other contributions.

Livelihood & Skills: Migration is a major problem in hills and many villages have become ghost- villages as young people relocate since agricultural production is low. Primary objective of this project was to improve income and welfare of select local community through organic farming of certain cash crops. In all >12.5 lac aromatic plants and >1 lac plantations were facilitated with >5000 farmers benefitted. About 185000 kg lemon-grass from 90 farmers of 4 villages was produced & processed yielding 67 kg oil. Besides, 2100 kg turmeric, 85 kg fresh red chilly, 37 kg black cardamom were collected from 20 villages and sold. >500 Kg ginger was produced in a poly-house. Training on orchard development was given to farmers and more than 10 lemon orchards were developed at different locations in which minimum 300 plants were given to each farmer.

Relief & Rehabilitation: During Covid-19, institution supported neighbouring Doiwala & Kalsi blocks and organized training for frontline Health Workers, including establishing testing facility at the Community Health Center levels through TrueNet Machine. Household based screening was done by Mid-Level Health Professionals across both blocks including special education sessions in schools (>30000 screenings). Besides distribution of >2500 food, hygiene & nutrition kits and other materials among people, COVID screening Kit (Thermal gun, Pulse ox meter, Masks, Gloves, sanitizers and face sheet) was also provided to frontline health workers. Further, >10000 people have been given medical support during various disasters, and >2000 differently- abled facilitated in getting medical aid/ certificates & benefit from social schemes.

Institutional Distinctiveness