During the launch, Dr. Bhavani Rao introduced Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s various initiatives for empowering the youth and women in rural India through AMMACHI Labs. AMMACHI Labs has a solid track record in initiating 21^st Century skills workshops targeting school children and young adults, particularly from villages and vulnerable sections of society for several years now. This prior experience was shared by Associate Prof. Gayathri Manikutty followed by a brief presentation on the DST project strategy by Ms. Sneha Jayahari. Following these presentations, Prof. Kamal Bijlani spoke about Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s past engagements with DST and formally introduced and welcomed Dr. Sujit Banerje, who then gave a keynote address and officially launched the DST project. He lauded the dedicated efforts of the entire Amrita team in empowering rural youth following the inspiration of its chancellor Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. He envisions this project as a key initiative funded by DST that will contribute to the goal of empowering the youth of India.

The project has several objectives:

1. To deliver group-based collaborative workshops in Internet Technologies, Mobile Apps, Multimedia and Maker for hands-on tinkering.
2. To conduct three hands-on workshops in three Hindi speaking villages. (A total of 9 workshops)
3. To deliver personalized online courses in vernacular languages for children based on concepts taught in workshops

This project aims to train 200 rural school students via online training and face to face training in the villages of Mahendragarh (Haryana), Kondagaon (Chattisgarh) and Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) through a series of 14-day workshops.