Gandhi Peace Award to Vivekananda Kendra Vedic Vision Foundation

New Delhi, Jan 30: Vivekananda Kendra Vedic Vision Foundation has been honoured with the 2015 Gandhi Peace Award. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated the Vivekananda Kendra for this coveted award. The selection panel for this award included Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Chief Justice of India and two other members. This award was not given to anyone since last some years, hence all the awards are declared together.

This is the first time that the awardees of four years have been announced together ever since the award was instituted in 1995.

While Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari, won the award for 2015 for rural development and education, for 2016, the award has been jointly given to Akshaya Patra Foundation for providing mid-day meals to children across the country and Sulabh International for its work towards emancipation of manual scavengers, the Ministry of Culture announced. For 2017, the award has been given to Ekai Abhiyan Trust for its contribution to education for rural and tribal children and for 2018, to WHO Goodwill Ambassador Yohei Sasakawa for his role in leprosy eradication.

Vivekananda Kendra Vedic Vision Foundation was set up by the founder of the Kendra late Eknath Ranade. After the successful installation of Vivekananda Rock Memorial at Kanyakumari, he decided to create an army of dedicated youth who would work for the emancipation of people from the neglected, exploited, deprived sections of the society. The Kendra has set up 830 activity centres in the country to launch organizational and service projects.

Vivekananda Kendra has been working in the field of formal and non-formal education through its schools in difficult regions of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland and Andaman. There are 75 such Vevekanand Kendra Vidyalayas running now.

The late Eknath Ranade laid special emphasis on developing activities in the northeast region which has a long international boundary and which remained cut-off from the rest of the country for various reasons. The Kendra started residential schools in Arunachal Pradesh and today it has become a brand name in that Himalayan state.

In the informal education sector the Kendra has started 120 Anandalaya in Assam’s tea garden areas and this has influenced the life in tea garden to a great extent. Today Kendra runs some 277 Anandalaya and over 200 balwadis.

Besides 565 sanskar vargas for 17000 studets, 147 swadhyaya varg fro 2500 college students are also being conducted.

The Kendra is concentrating on rural development projects in South Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Odisha, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh catering to the needs of children, youth and elderly persons.

The Gandhi Peace Prize, which is given to individuals and institutions for their contribution towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods, was last conferred upon the Indian Space Research Organisation in 2014.

The decision to confer these awards was taken at a meeting of the five-member jury Wednesday chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, BJP leader L K Advani, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi as members. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 1 crore, a citation and a handicraft item.