Rural Innovation Initiative

Rural Innovation Initiatives Cell was formed with view that Darsana with significant technical skills should work on creating some support structure to assist the unorganized rural innovation segment of Kerala.

Objectives and targets of the Rural innovation initiative
1. Become an enabler /aggregator of all Rural Innovation initiatives in Kerala.
2. Become a platform / go to place for rural innovators to address all their challenges
 
Some of the Initiatives where Darsana Rural Innovation Cell Involvement

Interventions in the Nano Excavator project
Darsana RII members put efforts to support the inventor to garner existing provisions of the governmental bodies. Our team were instrumental in Contacting KSUM (KERALA START UP MISSION) to check out possibilities of financial support. Darsana team handled all paper work and preparatory activities to enable inventor to apply for and present the Nano excavator for the NIDHI PRAYAS YOJANA. The outcome was once again positive and was one of the shortlisted projects for this award and will receive a financial assistance of Rs. 5 Lakhs upon completion of certain formalities. Darsana RII team visited the facility to check viability of assisting in the manufacturing. Please refer the youtube link for details

https://youtu.be/kfdSB-yz1KA?si=ids3vAoBiy8G-pxV

Interventions in the Zendelona project
Zendelona team has taken it up on themselves as their life mission to work on possibilities which can help the blind community. They are very specific on working on FOSS ( Free and Opens Source software) based models only under the banner of ‘Zendalona’ (https://zendalona.com/ ) . The challenge is to find and develop a team to assist as required in their endeavor.
 
Conducted a 3 hour workshop on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in collaboration with the Zendalona team at GEC-S (Government Engineering College Sreekrishnapuram) for Computer Science and IT students.  The workshop was attended by 60 students. Offered internships to interested students for Zendalona projects.  You can find the recording of the session here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEq89-Fy9XM
RII team is discussing possible options to actively support Zendalona and bring it to a sustainable mode in 2 to 3 years. Will need participation from a large set of members to take this forward.

Looking Forward
Rural innovation team is setting aside a lot of time to work on various initiatives. In many cases, these involve financial commitments as well. We are eagerly looking forward to many more volunteers to be part of this initiative.

Soon we will be launching a website to collect requests on help needed by Rural Innovators