The Easwaramma Trust is continuing with its social programs for the uplift of rural women and children in the surrounding area.
The Sri Sathya Sai Easwaramma Women's Welfare Trust is carrying on with its eight-year program of monthly medical camps for mothers and children in the area surrounding Puttaparthi. We are now able to handle more complicated cases by diagnosing and referring the patients to hospitals.
The sanitation program is an extension of the mother-and-child health and hygiene mandate of the Easwaramma Trust. In surveys in the local villages, toilets were determined to be what was most needed next. Once the give-away program was announced, an overwhelming number of applications came in, over 5000 in the first year.
Recipients were carefully chosen according to the Trust's need-based policies. Four contractors have been continuously building 50 toilets each at a time. A maximum of 1000 are being built in the first year of this program, most within 60 km. of Puttaparthi, but this is an ongoing project expected to continue at the rate of approximately 1000 per year.
The villagers themselves, as well as the village schools and the village governing councils (panchayats), are welcoming the teams of contractors, even offering food and fruits to them with happy faces.
After assessing the needs of secondary school children in the Puttaparthi District, the Easwaramma Trust decided on donating notepads to children for taking notes and doing homework assignments. Eight government schools out of the eleven schools surveyed were evaluated as being in need, so as a start, 1610 students in the 8th, 9th and 10th standards in these schools are being given six small and six large writing tablets each, the covers printed with Sri Sathya Sai Baba's and Mother Easwaramma's photos.
This is now an ongoing project for the Easwaramma Trust, and schools in other districts are being surveyed for their needs. Other items that might enhance students' studies are also being considered for future giveaways, such as solar lamps, geometry boxes, atlases and science kits. Textbooks were also considered for donation, but the state government has now taken this up.