Sri Vidya Trust for Education

SVT aims to provide education for all children in the 100 villages close to Devipuram. These schools will focus on basic education, personal skills development and developing positive attitude towards life and culture.

For more than 11 years, 45 schools have been operational, and provide free education for 1100 children aged between 6 and 14. Furthermore, over 45 night schools have been operating with Government funding. Due to lack of support from the Governament, this project had to be stopped. SVT is planning on reviving these schools to be run by the students themselves. SVT’s latest venture is that of establishing a residential school, to impart skills such as carpentry, masonry, welding, home building, tailoring and brick making.

Sri Vidya Trust for Empowering Women

The SVT program for empowering women was established to achieve two objectives:
First, to encourage and support the organization of women for the achievement of their educational and social goals. Second, to improve the quality of life and achieve greater self-reliance by forming local cooperative village banks; encouraging small business enterprises and organizing women's groups to deal with the problems of exploitation, alcoholism and discrimination.

56 villages have formed women's cooperative banks, the capital for which is provided completely by the local women. The combined capital of these banks currently totals to Rs 30,000,000 (US$ 600,000) or more, with 2 annual rotations. Loan recoveries have been close to 95% or better. More than 10 local income-producing enterprises have been funded in the past year by these banks.

In 1994, with the help of OXFAM of India, SVT and a group of ten other voluntary agencies organized a conference of women's groups at Anakapalle in which over 10,000 members participated. These women, along with representatives of the ten voluntary agencies, were able to discuss their problems, distill their common experiences and needs, and then suggest solutions for improving the quality of their lives. SVT also strives to encourage small business development
in the 100 villages that surround Devipuram.

Sri Vidya Trust for Medical Outreach

In order to offer basic health services and health education to the villagers in the surrounding areas, Sri Vidya Trust
is proposing to commission and maintain a competently staffed mobile clinic that can make weekly rounds to the 100 villages surrounding Devipuram. The project will focus on prevention, effective alternative medicine, and life saving referral and social services, and will use the existing base of 4000 women for implementation.

Sri Vidya Trust is seeking funds for making this project a reality. The cost is anticipated to be US$ 40,000 in the first year, and US$ 10,000 every year thereafter.

Training Centers

Our body needs exercise, the mind needs rest and the soul needs prayer. Music, Dance, Sculpture, Painting and Prayer fulfill all these needs in various ways. We need to constantly train our body to be connected with what the mind desires. This is what makes us feel complete. Guruji has foreseen these requirements, which we frequently think about practising. Devipuram will shortly have Shyama School of Fine Arts to bring you training in the following arts.