RILM helps NCERT receive UNESCO award

NCERT was awarded ­UNESCO’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the e-learning content for Classes 1–12 being aired on 12 ‘PM e-Vidya’ DTH TV channels. The content, ­comprising 2,000 episodes of 30-­minute slots, was put together by Rotary India Literacy Mission (RILM) after an MoU was signed between Rotary India ­Humanity Foundation (RIHF) and NCERT in June 2020 in the presence of the then Union HRD minister Ramesh ­Pokhriyal Nishank and education secretary Anita Karwal.

RILM also created the audio-visual content for GoI’s ‘Diksha’, the national platform for school education.

Amarendra P Behera, joint director of CIET-NCERT, received the award at Paris in July this year. In an interview he thanked the Rotarians “who had worked tirelessly across the years in promoting e-learning. The UNESCO award and Rotary’s contribution is a matter of pride for the country.”

Earlier in his letter to PRIP ­Shekhar Mehta, he had said that the initiative will bridge the digital divide for the vast majority of underprivileged children who do not have access to online education through smartphones, but have a TV at home.