WHO WE ARE
"Everyone has a purpose in life…a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals".
It is from the visionary thought that the youth of the nation should grow in service mentality and option for the disadvantaged that National Service Scheme had its inception in the Birth Centenary Year of Mahatma Gandhi, a man who never distinguished between service for the cause of humanity from true living as a human being. Thus in 1969, National Service Scheme, popularly known as NSS was launched in 37 Universities involving 40,000 students with primary focus on the development of personality of students through community service.
National Service Scheme falls under the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports, Government of India and today has more than 3.2 million student volunteers on its roll spread over 298 Universities and 42 Senior Secondary Councils and Directorate of Vocational Education all over the country.
True to its motto of "Not Me But You", NSS has a noble history of reaching out to more than 3.75 crores students from Universities, Colleges and Institutions of higher learning, enrolling them as student volunteers and engaging them in social service.
National Service Scheme from its very beginning in IIT Madras about 20 years ago has been proactive in all areas of social service and has been the primary medium for channelising the young minds of the campus into social service and societal development. NSS continues to collaborate with numerous NGOs with stupendous history of reaching out to the weaker sections, needy and neglected. NSS supports and contributes to their cause and gives platform to discuss and give voice to many hitherto unnoticed and neglected groups. NSS over the years have collaborated with groups and NGOs working for the the physically challenged, acid attack survivors, environmentalists and conservationalists, educationalists and social reformers.
NSS in IIT Madras is a compulsory organisation for the first year students joining every year along with National Sports Organisation and National Cadet Corps. Around 300 volunteers join NSS every year to work on various areas of social service.
NSS has a faculty adviser of its own and is led by a managerial team. The managerial team, selected for a tenure of one year is divided into subteams for targeted and focussed activities, beneficial for volunteers and community alike. The sub teams include Events team, Project Administration Team, Public Relations team, Media Team, Finance Team and Webops Team.
The events team gets involved in conducting events all through the year. All the events helps volunteers and the general IITM community alike to engage in socially relevant issues and develop internally with a humanitarian outlook towards inequalities and disadvantages in society. Events include monthly collection drives where volunteers go to the residential zone and collect clothes, papers and perishable food items which are later donated to the needy through NGOs and service organisations and General Collection Drives where volunteers go to the academic and hostel zones and collect papers, usable electronic gadgets etc which are then distributed through NGOs and service organisations. NSS also does mattress donation drives and graduating students collection drives. Other events include NSS Foundation Day Lectures, Panel Discussions, movie screenings, lecture series, fieldvisits and workshops. NSS lectures have brought in bureaucrats, technocrats, philanthrophists, environmental advocates and social reformers. Its workshops equip students to reach out to weaker sections and support them and its panel discussions trace the trajectory of humanitarian discourses.
On the project front, NSS collaborates with NGOs, schools and social service organisations for creating a long term impact in society. Projects also enable volunteers to have first hand experience in contributing to society and getting to know people around them. Projects are broadly arranged into the following categories - teaching projects, bring a change projects and content generation projects.
Over the years, NSS has worked with schools, colleges and NGOs in reaching out to students from poor economic background and has been involved in teaching projects where volunteers go to schools or bring students to the campus and teaches them subjects according to their preferences. Subjects include basic maths, sciences, social sciences and languages. Teaching projects have been able to provide kids, children and teenagers a steeping stone in moulding their academic career.
Content generation projects focus on generating useful content for a targeted group. They have engaged in generating audio content for the visually challenged, scolarship database in blogs, malayalam, hindi and marathi content in wikipedia etc.
Bring a change projects emphasise on working on socially relevant areas for change. These include visit to and mingling with kids at the regional cancer centre, engaging with autistic persons, visually and physically challenged and mentally challenged. There are also projects working on creating awareness about and participating in blood donations, reforestation, campaign against drugs and protecting animals.
Projects also organise camps in schools and colleges with special target groups. These include science camps in schools and camps for the visually challenged. NSS IITM has also hosted camps within the campus to facilitate students from other parts of the state to explore and get a feel of IIT Madras. Further NSS conducts an annual open house to take its projects to the general student body by showcasing its activities over the year through photos, videos, presentations and installations.
Apart from projects and events, NSS, under its Public Relations team, also provides winter internships popularly known as winterns, where students can intern with NGOs through NSS.All of these internships focus on content generation, course content development, engaging with physically challenged and teaching soft skills to mentally challenged.
NSS IITM has also been enthusiastic in engaging with NSS units outside the campus through conclaves and collaborations on projects.
Media team and webops team works on making NSS events, projects and winterns available to all- especially to the general public outside the campus through photos, videos and regular updates in website. Finance team, as the name signifies ensures budget for all activities happening all through the year under the purview of NSS.
Though there are challenges and opportunities lying ahead for NSS IITM including the involvement of the general student body, involvement in socially relevant issues outside the campus and so on, NSS IITM has always upheld its own motto of "Not me, but you" by inspiring, encouraging and engaging with the youngsters who join this coveted institution. NSS is always proud to have upheld the humanitarian cause and stand for service expecting nothing in return, dedicating itself to the service of society and nature.