2-8 October 2019

Dasara or Navaratri is a ten-day festival, usually falling in the month of October, and is celebrated all over India in the worship of the Divine as the Mother principle. Since the early sixties, the festival of Dasara in Prasanthi Nilayam has been closely associated with the Veda Purusha Saptaha Jnana Yagna. This yagnam is a week-long worship conducted in the Divine Presence in the Poornachandra Auditorium in Prasanthi Nilayam each year for the welfare of the whole world. The yagnam commences on the fourth day of Dasara and concludes with the Poornahuti – the final oblation that is offered on Vijayadasami, the tenth day.

In addition to other rituals, the most important component of the yagnam is the Rudra yagam where the oblations are made in the Yagna Kunda to Lord Shiva while chanting hymns from the Sri Rudram. The students of Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning take active part by chanting the vedas, reading the scriptures and performing other parts of the worship along with the learned pundits.

The evening programmes during the seven days of the yagnam are held in Sai Kulwant Hall, under the auspices of the ‘Prasanthi Vidwan Mahasabha’, where many speakers—primarily students and functionaries of Bhagawan’s educational institutions—address the gathering on topics concerning spirituality and philosophy, Bhagawan’s teachings and experiences of devotees.

‘Swacch Bharat’ occupies a central theme alongside development goals of the Government of India. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has identified SSSIHL’s potential and requested to implement a ‘Swachh Action Plan’ (SAP) (since 2018) in nearby ‘adopted’ villages. You can see these in action on our posts on Grama Seva here, here and here.

The purpose is to use higher education skills to help meet a clean living environment and assist villagers in getting clean water and sanitation, health care, energy, education etc in a sustainable manner. Educated youth are also urged to develop skills, build capacity and mind set to address community problems in their surroundings.

In addition, the University has always adopted best practices towards the Greenery of the campuses, cleanliness, recycling and waste management. Some of these are highlighted in the photo collage below.

#SSSIHLIntegralEducation #SSSIHL

Campus Greenery

SSSIHL Kitchens

Liquid Biomedical Waste Decontamination Disposal

SSSIHL Solar Panels

Liquid Biomedical Waste Decontamination Disposal

Lord Ganesha. He removes our obstacles; He liberates our mind from fear. He infuses in us the courage to follow dharma, and ultimately protects us all.

This afternoon, at SSSIHL, the staff of the Administrative Office and students from all four campuses – Prasanthi Nilayam, Anantapur, Brindavan and Muddenahalli – came together in love and reverence for Lord Ganesha.

The individual chariots, made with immense love for Bhagawan Baba, and decorated with all the possible hues of colour — each with a creative story and message behind it, made their way from the office or the hostel to the final destination of immersion.

#SSSIHL #GaneshChaturthi #SSSIHLIntegralEducation

Students and Teachers across all SSSIHL campuses celebrate India’s 73^rd #independenceday

#SSSIHL

#GramaSeva
Initiate. Serve. Love. Repeat.

Almost ten months ago, in the early hours of 16 October 2018, teams of students and teachers of the Prasanthi Nilayam Campus, SSSIHL, packed with enthusiasm, love and supplies, left for their first visit to three villages – Narsimpalli, Bukkapatnam Mandal (Population: 2500), Bonthalapalli, Puttaparthi Mandal (Population: 2500) and Marlapalli, Puttaparthi Mandal (Population: 1000).

The idea was to makes these villages not just self-sufficient, but model villages which can then affect change in other communities in the district.

In the multiple visits during the academic year 2018/19, they assisted the village folk in the areas of Sports and Fitness, Education, Music, Cleanliness, Plumbing and Survey work. Considerable progress was made in all these areas.
In this manner, they fulfilled their promises to the elders of these villages.

On 14 July 2019, the teams visited all the villages again to continue their work from the previous academic year.
At the village of Narsimpalli, students and teachers responded to the requests of village folk in providing minimum maintenance for the existing dilapidated government school. They began with essential plumbing work (taps, pipelines, etc.) and worked with the village mason and others to facilitated further work.

At Bonthalapalli, students of the Dept. of Economics took on the challenge of reducing unemployment of the village youth. The highlighted the need for better skills to get actively employed. They then interviewed the twenty unemployed youth of the villages and assessed their current educational qualifications, levels of skills, etc. They set a target of 15 August to go back with consolidated data and actively work with them to teach the required set of soft skills, thus enhancing their employability.

At Marlapalli, under the Education module, students of 4-6 Std. were trained in basic reading skills. Students of Std. VII were involved in a host of Mathematical activities. Other activities include making of Bank books, learning basic music skills and Yoga asanas.

Separately, medical data of 78 village elders was collected and students of the M.Tech. (Computer Science) programme employed their data mining skills and came up with a follow-up plan (including predictive measures) for the next action steps.

Love All, Serve All, as our Revered Founder Chancellor always taught us.

#SSSIHLService #SSSIHLIntegralEducation

International Yoga Day celebrated @ SSSIHL

From Pranayama to Suryanamaskar to Dandasana, Bakasana, Mayurasan, Hata yogas, Kriyas and even an elocution on Yoga, students, teachers and mentors from all our campuses joined millions of people around the world to celebrate the ancient Indian tradition of Yoga on International Yoga Day on 21 June.

#YogaDay, #SSSIHLIntegralEducation

13-15 June 2019

The Summer Course in Indian Culture & Spirituality serves as an induction programme to all students and teachers of Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning with an objective to expose students of the University to the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of Bharat. It orients students into Bhagawan Baba’s educational philosophy and gives them deep, first hand insights into how they can directly benefit from this unique institution.

During the academic year 2019/20, the event was held at each of the four campuses of SSSIHL – Prasanthi Nilayam, Anantapur, Brindavan and Muddenahalli – from 13 to 15 June 2019.

All students and teachers of the University participated, along with several invited guest speakers. On display was a smorgasbord of creative and engaging topics, discussions, talks, singing, chanting and quizzes – each purposefully curated to imbibe in students the key teachings on Indian culture and spirituality from the ancient scriptures and Sai literature.

Some of these included:
Quiz on Great Epics of Indian Culture, Swami’s Guidelines for good living, Bhagawan on the significance of the Summer Course, Divine Directions and their practical implementation in our daily life, Lessons from the Bhagavatam, Panel Discussion on Indian Culture and Spirituality, Sri Rama and Sai Rama, Importance of Vedic Literature in Indian culture, Impact of Bhagawan and the Sri Sathya Sai System of Education, Spirituality in Daily Life, Sarva Karma Bhagavath Prityartham – Lessons from our scriptures, Self-Image and Positive Psychology, Head in the forest, hands in the society – Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita, Help Ever Hurt Never, Role of Discipline, Duty & Devotion in the development of Personality of a student, Workshop on devotional singing, Sadhana and Seva, Food Habits and Health, The profound Truths in Hindu Mythology, The science behind ancient Bharatiya traditions and practices, The inner connect with Bhagawan

#GramaSeva
Initiate. Serve. Love. Repeat.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime

This is what the students, doctoral research scholars and teachers of SSSIHL Prasanthi Nilayam campus put into practice for several months when they made multiple visits to the villages of Narsimpalli, Bukkapatnam Mandal (Population: 2500), Bonthalapalli, Puttaparthi Mandal (Population: 2500) and Marlapalli, Puttaparthi Mandal (Population: 1000).

Just as the years gone by, when they would deliver food, clothing and love to villages around Puttaparthi and its surrounding mandals, this new initiative by the Prasanthi Nilayam Campus – with the kind support of the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust – has renewed #GramaSeva and made it a more sustainable model.

The several teams of students and teachers (which included all students of the Campus), after multiple visits, made visible progress in various areas of the programme during the year. Some of these included:

Sports and Fitness: Prepared grounds by removing weeds. Played volleyball matches with the village youth. Conducted different races (such as sack race, lemon-spoon race, etc.) For children aged 5-10, conducted games based on jumping and balancing. They were also schooled in basic health areas and taught a few yogic postures such as the Surya Namaskar.

Education: Math, Science and fun games, as well as Bal Vikas for Primary school, II to X Std. kids. This included training in basic Mathematics activities using a geoboard. Students also made some educational kits and gifted them to the school.

Music: Bhajan singing, vedam chanting, flute renditions, teaching the basics of Music (by a teacher at the Dept. of Music), and teaching musical instruments, such as Kanjira and Talam.

Cleanliness / Hygiene Drive: Played ‘Waste Plastic Picking Game’ with all children of the villages. Students exhaustively cleaned walls of various temples and mosques in the villages, Anganwadis (rural child care centers), play areas and even wells that had been used as a rubbish dump for years! A handful of flowering plants were then planted across the villages. Villagers were also given basic education on the importance of hygiene and cleanliness.

Greenery: Plantation of trees and beautification of the village and surroundings

Plumbing work: Students took on a host of civil and plumbing duties. From changing of a 3-inch outlet pipe from the 2000-liter main storage tank to laying a CPVC pipeline for the school underground water storage tank, this is where the maintenance training they got as part of the Self Reliance activities at the hostel really kicked in. They fixed overhead tanks, constructed urinals and toilets (including tiling work), fixed leaking taps across the villages and also assisted in fixing mesh windows and doors to prevents unwanted guests such as insects and reptiles into washroom areas.

Surveys: Students split into different teams to conduct comprehensive individual and household surveys for issues such as the number of elderly folks and how to serve them better on future visits, what their immediate needs are, etc. They also conducted a data survey of all households of the villages to map the socio-economic and demographic challenges. The Chemistry students performed certain experiments as a preparatory phase to check for the efficacy of usage of ground shells at the villages.

As a result of this sustained care and effort, the villagers were really happy and joyful and full of appreciation. The long-term goal is help the villages achieve self-sustainability. Once the village is a model village, they will be able to help other villages achieve the same.

Love All, Serve All, as our Revered Founder Chancellor always taught us.

#SSSIHLService #SSSIHLIntegralEducation

What do SSSIHL students do after their classes on a weekday afternoon?
Plant trees, of course!

Neem, Banyan, Tamarind trees and a few other varieties of trees were planted by students across campuses.

The trees were tagged and named after the student who planted them, so that when they back in the future to visit their Mother Sai, they can also pay a visit to the very Mother Nature that He nurtured.

The students were ably chaperoned by their teachers. Even the Directors of Campuses and the Vice Chancellor got involved and planted a tree.

#SSSIHLIntegralEducation #SSSIHL