Gandhi Institute Receives US$5 Million Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

NEW DEHLI -- The Gandhi Institute will receive a US$5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Free Job-oriented Computer Training Programme targeted at educated, unemployed youth under its Gandhi Institute for Computer Education & Information Technology, headquartered in Mumbai.

"Bhavan's initiative to promote free computer education comes at a time when computer skills are becoming a basic qualification for jobs in India," said Mr. Murli Deora, Vice-Chairman of the Ghandi Institute. "The support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underlines Mr. Gates' satisfaction at the progress achieved by Bhavan in its pioneering programme."

Bhavan, recognized as the world's largest NGO of its kind, was also recently awarded a National Integration Award by the Union Government for its sustained efforts in uniting the country as one culturally.

Mr. Deora's initiative, Bhavan's Free Computer Education Programme, was kickstarted in 1997 with then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh inaugurating the first Centre at Bhavan's Mumbai headquarters.

An extremely happy Mr. Deora said, "It is a matter of great inspiration, incentive and impetus for us to receive such wonderfully large-hearted support from people like Mr. Gates. I wish the world had more and more of them who did not limit their charity to home but took it beyond to encourage all worthy causes in a spirit of promoting a world without barriers where the common, universal good of mankind alone mattered."

Thanking Mr. Gates for his outstanding gesture, Mr. Deora said the Bhavan's programme of setting up 50 centres all over India, of which 14 are already working, would march confidently ahead to achieve the target of training 50,000 students annually, creating a reservoir of computer trained people. The training courses, he added, would be amended and adapted progressively to suit the changing needs of the job market and in tune with the rapid developments in the e-commerce field in particular and the computer field in general.