PRESS RELEASE
CHENNAI: March 08, 2024

60 National virtual fellows will benefit from the programme.

We are delighted to announce that ECHO India’s long-awaited program was launched on March 8 in honor of International Women’s Day. This marks the inaugural program focusing on agriculture and nutrition. The MS Swaminathan Research Foundation has introduced its first classic ECHO program, dedicated to nutritional literacy, for its NVA (National Virtual Academy) fellows. The NVA fellows are rural farmers personally identified by the late Bharat Ratna, Mr. Swaminathan, and trained by his team. After a significant period, the foundation has decided to leverage the expertise of NVA fellows to raise awareness about nutrition among the rural population. In this endeavor, the Foundation has chosen ECHO India as the primary mode of communication. On the day of launch, the MSSRF team successfully connected with a group of NVA fellows from Puducherry, Pudukottai, and Thiruvaiyaru districts of Tamil Nadu through iECHO.

The session was graced by Dr. Hariharan, Executive Director, Dr. Rengalakshmi, Director, MSSRF, Mr. Sanjay Joshi, and Dr. Haresh, ECHO India.

The nutritional literacy program has been designed in such a way that NVA fellows are trained in nutrition modules that are useful in day-to-day life as well as for healthier living. The module has been designed with 12 sessions for 60 participants in the first batch.

The program strategy is to spread this nutritional awareness-focused course by training effective individuals who have immense capacity to transform rural health. The program will create awareness among adult men and women about their health. Several schemes of the government were also included in the module to provide wider knowledge to the participants.

During the launch, Dr. G. N. Hariharan, executive director of MSSRF, welcomed the ECHO-India team and the participants. On his welcome note, he emphasized the importance of health and livelihood-focused training for rural folks. He thanked the Echo-India team for providing a great platform with the motto “Moving knowledge, not people.”

Mr. Sanjay Joshie, Head of Agriculture, livelihood, and climate change at Echo India, said in his remarks that Project ECHO is a lifelong learning and guided practice model that revolutionizes education and community awareness, exponentially increases the capacity of the targeted group to provide the best quality education and awareness, and also reduces the digital divide.

Mr. Haresh Chandwani, Associate general manager, Echo India extended thanks to the stakeholders of the program and wished the team for executing the several other programs in the coming days through iEcho platform.

Dr. Rengalakshmi, Director, MSSRF has emphasized on the importance of providing awareness of nutrition and health to the rural community. Interns of MSSRF that pursue Master degree in nutrition and health from Manipal university were also present during the program. The participants expressed their expectations of the program and thanked the MSSRF and team for providing them with the much-needed nutrition literacy program.

Dr. R. Rajkumar, Principal scientist, MSSRF thanked Dr. Soumya Swaminthan, chairperson, MSSRF for emphasizing the capacity building of NVA fellows and for implementing the Project Echo in the foundation. He expressed his gratitude to the NVA fellows for their unwavering support to MSSRF and its initiatives. He also thanked the MSSRF and Echo- India team for the execution of the program with special mention to Dr. Rama Narayanan and the interns who played a major role in developing the curriculum.