Sightsavers India Bags HCL Grant Award

Bhubaneswar: Sightsavers India (Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind) has been awarded the prestigious HCL Grant award in the thematic category for education for its outstanding work around
inclusive education for the visually impaired students in India.

The grant award was conferred by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at an event organized by HCL Technologies at its campus in Noida recently. The grant award carries Rs 5 crore (~$ 750,000.) for a five year project, towards each Thematic Category.

Chief Executive Officer, Sightsavers India RN Mohanty received the award from the Union Home Minister in the presence of Union Minister. Mahesh Sharma, Founder & Chairman, HCL Shiv Nadar, CEO, HCL Corporation and Chairperson of the CSR Committee for the HCL Technologies Board Roshni Nadar Malhotra and President and CEO, HCL Technologies C Vijayakumar.

Sightsavers India won the competition from 3600 NGOs who applied for this coveted development grant assistance.

Speaking on the process of selection, Programme Manager, Sightsavers Akbar Mehfuz Alam said, “HCL Foundation after scrutinizing the proposal submitted by Sightsavers sent its team to capture the live footages of the work we are doing in a remote rural school in Koraput district of Odisha. The team of videographers and experts independently documented the case study of Swagatika, a visually impaired girl studying in standard 7th in Mathalput Ex-Board School under Koraput block. Swagatika who was born blind and struggled initially to meet her education needs received the timely support from Sightsavers initiated Inclusive Education programme in the district in the year 2011.”