Bengaluru Rotaract holds mega eye camps
A three-year-old Rotaract club, RAC Bangalore Revolution, RID 3191, is organising mega eye camps at government and private schools, screening over 2,700 students, and has distributed spectacles to 270 children till now. Project Active Eyes ropes in NGOs and eye hospitals to screen children for eye defects in the last two years. “In July 2022, we tied up with the Sankara Eye Hospital, and in July 2023, we roped in Globe Eye Foundation, a local NGO, to conduct the eye check-up camps,” said Preksha Y L, club president. So far, the project has reached out to eight government and private schools across Bengaluru.
Usually, it is a three-day eye camp arranged by a team of 15 Rotaractors and patients are screened by a panel of 7–8 doctors. “This year, we have planned three eye camps, preferably in July-August, at orphanages and rural areas of Karnataka. The third edition of Active Eyes is still under planning stage,” she said. Another noteworthy initiative is Project Code Red wherein a door-to-door campaign on menstrual hygiene is conducted, along with the distribution of sanitary pads to women. “We have visited five slum colonies and distributed over 8,000 sanitary pads to beneficiaries who were also taught best hygiene practices,” said Preksha. During their whirlwind MHM campaign, they found the newborn babies were “put under unsanitary conditions, resulting in their being exposed to infections and viral diseases. So we will be giving out 50 baby kits under a new project to mothers of newborns in these slums.” Each baby kit will have a feeding bottle, diapers and packs of baby food formula.
Along with their parent, RC Bangalore IT Corridor, the Rotaractors took out a student rally titled ‘Eco Warriors Unite’ to turn the spotlight on environment issues as the city is plagued by rising air and water pollution, apart from massive erosion of green cover across the urban landscape, once known as ‘the garden city’. The rally drove home the message of the urgent need to ensure a “greener future for city residents with over 260 students holding a huge banner in front and with multiple placards raised slogans against the worsening environment in Bengaluru.”
Expressing her gratitude to their parent Rotary’s past secretary Shrirang Pande (2023–24) “for helping us connect with Rotarians and providing logistic support to our service projects,” Preksha said most of their activities and community initiatives were sponsored by their parent club. With 48 members, the community-based club is located in Whitefield, an IT hub in the eastern periphery of Bengaluru, through most of its members, engineering students, are residents of Hebbal in northern neighbourhood. Two of its members are Indian students studying in Russia and Germany.
Doing her third year BE, Computer Science, at Atria Institute of Technology, Hebbal, the club president is keen to join a Rotary club. “I have improved a lot in communication skills, built my social networking through a long list of friends, and connecting with new people on Rotaract. I look forward to become a Rotarian in the near future,” smiled Preksha.
