The Vidya Deepa Program has been executed by Rotary Club, Bangalore West (RBW) & Menda Foundation and supported by Project Management Institute (PMI), Bangalore India Chapter. Vidya Deepa aims to provide solar powered LED lamps to Grade 10 students to counter the unpleasant power situation in rural areas.

The project currently has installed 140 panels and 140 solar lamp kits have been distributed.

Project Beneficiaries are the government run schools and NGO-run schools meeting the criteria:• Having up to Grade 10• Having Kannada language as a medium of instruction• Having very high power outage• Having 30 to 50 students

Project Objectives• Enable better preparation for the exams irrespective of the power outages in rural areas

Project Scale and complexity• Vidya Deepa: 140 kits to be given to Government and NGO-run schools• The scale is more than 3 times compared to 2013 year• Additional stakeholders in the form of donors from India and abroad• Covering 9 Districts spread across a radius of 300 KMs from Bangalore• Involvement of 19 Rotary Clubs from Karnataka District

The Map of India

9 Districts, 22 taluks and 77 Villages covered

1. Bangalore Rural: Nelamangala, Devanahalli, Doddabalapur -Doddamaranahalli, Bachahalli, Vijayapura, Jalige, Chikkamudivadi

2. Bangalore Urban: Bangalore North; Chikkaballapur, Kanakapura -Sondekoppa, Kadathipura, Melya, Namagondlu, Gollahalli, Huduguru, Dpalya, Bychapura, Karadahalli, Kanthapura, Manne, Byrashettyhalli

3. Kolar: Malur, Mulbagal, Chintamani, Bangarpet, Srinivasapura- Oorgaum, Doddaganjur, Bagepalli, Srinivasapura, Karanjikatt, Kembodi, Doddashivara, DNDoddi, Chikkatirupati, Lakkur, Madanahalli cross, Thotli, Belamaranahalli, Oorkuntemittur, Bandarahalli, Khadaripura, NarasimhaTeertha, Mulbagal

4. Tumkur: Sidlaghatta, Madhugiri, Pavagada, Gubbi, Chikkanayakanahalli- Chikkanayakanahalli, Handanagere, Hosahatti, Siddapura, Hosakere, Rantwala, Nagalamadike, Venkatapura, Dommathamali, Veeralagundi, Gujjanedu, Bhaktarahalli

5. Hassan: Hassan - Kattaya

6. Dharmapuri, Hosur (TN)-S Muddaganapalli

7. Mandya: Nagamangala, Pandavapura - Kuntibetta, Pandavapura, Melkote, Chikkabydarahalli, Yelikere,

8. Shimoga: Tirthahalli - Bavikaisaru, Guddekoppa, Kadtur, Kannangi, Malur, Mandagadde, Melige, Nonabur, Ramakrishnapura, Tudur, Konandur, Tirthahalli, Humchadkatte, Heddur, Mathigaru, Araga, Kattehaklu, Kodlu, Kondluru, Malaimakki

9. Ramanagara: Magadi - Solur, Kodihalli

Project Durationplanned was for 12 weeks, starting from 15thNovember 2013 to 31st January 2014. The actual though took longer, 16 weeks from 15thNovember 2013 to 28th Feb 2014 (Imported battery, custom clearance delayed the project completion by 4 weeks).

Understanding VDP

There are 35 to 40 students in each class, but an average is 32 = 140 X 32 = 4480 (min)These high intensity LED lamps have acompact sized battery providing back up for 9 to 10 hours

Stakeholders and their Contribution

PMO Charter anchored the planning, coordinating activities through liaison and reporting the status regularly by establishing process with connected process artifacts (templates, guidelines, checklists, forms). A “model PM framework” was set so that it can be used for any other project run by Rotary.

The PMO contributed to conceptualization and rationalized approach for number of kits to be given to a school (32 kits per school with minimum of 30 students) and linking of kits to solar panel (32 kits per solar panel) along with installation the PMO also established a coding system for the equipment, identification of the solar panel (eg. 1250), Charger (1250-1 & 1250-2) and battery (1250-1 to 1250-32). A process was setup to run surveys and to analyze feedback on usage and performance. The process included identification of project phases, detailing of phases into tasks with outputs and responsibilities, bill of material tracker, risk tracking, MoM and action item tracker.

Feedback from Survey (42 schools – 28th Feb 2014)Students Benefitted: 1216 + 83 (group study) =1299

Feedback from Survey (27 schools – 28th Feb)

Best Practices was personal commitment that drove towards taking up some of the panel installations in advance and keeping them ready for battery distribution (considering the long cycle time for it). The team mastered the art of clustering the trips, installation by team the same level of quality in a very short time and productivity moved up from 3 panel installation to sometime 6 in a day. Along with this the project funding got a big boost (2X) with Menda Foundation committing equal contribution for Vidya Deepa as that is done by Rotary.

Not only this, the engagement with the schools and students is also ongoing. All the batteries and lamps were returned by the 10th standard students to the respective schools after the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) examinations. The solar lamps, returned batteries and lamps were serviced by the vendor at the respective schools during October/November 2014 and have since been reissued by the schools to the current year's 10th standard students. Feedback reports have been obtained from all the beneficiary schools. The project provides for similar annual servicing till 2017-18. In all five batches of 10th standard students preparing for the SSLC examination will benefit from the project that was executed in 2013-14. Many Lessons Learnt were learnt in this project and they are as follows,

Get local rotary clubs involved, ways to identifythe schools and collecting the data to aid selection process, getting financial commitment for the identified school, coordinating with school authority for installation and distribution of kits, getting feedback on usage and performance and keeping a track on the maintenance of the kits and coming up with the plan for installation and distribution to be improved based on production rate of LED lamps, battery and panel installation.

Ensuring of LED lamps for all students (where students are more than LED lamps distributed) Improving the usage of ePS through projector (instead of LED monitors) Evaluate technical and cost aspects and explore the possibility of using projectors Constraint on battery import (customs clearance & Min. order Qty) Explore the possibility of indigenous source / supply of batteries

Next Steps: The Project has now enteredthe maintenance phase providing the required technical support, also a MOU for yearly maintenance of batteries. A regular cycle of to collect feedback using questionnaire and collect metrics after examination results.

These are the contributors from the PMI Bangalore Chapter:

Suresh Thiagarajan, PMI Bangalore Chapter Volunteer - PMO from the Chapter Nagaraj, PMI Bangalore Chapter Volunteer - Data management co-coordinator and prepared templates

for registration and certifications Goutham, PMI Bangalore Chapter Volunteer - Designed feedback forms to collect feedback from

schools Amar & VSS - Advisory Council Members from the PMI Bangalore Chapter who supervised the

entire program Sumanth - VP Professional Development, PMI Bangalore Chapter in-charge of the program