Dr. A. Ravishankar's Profile
B. Tech in Electronics from IIT Madras. MS & PhD in Electronics from Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Worked as Advisory Engineer in IBM, Austin. Volunteered with AID in Pittsburgh and started AID Chapter in Austin. Returned to India in 2003 as Faculty at IIT Madras so that he could volunteer with AID INDIA in its education programs. In 2006, he became adjunct faculty at IIT-Madras so that he could devote full time to AID INDIA's education programs. Ravishankar was instrumental in developing the science demo class program and the Ariviyal Anandam programs which are being implemented in schools across the state. Ravishankar, along with Gomathi, developed the Eureka Science Lab-in-a-Box, for which AID INDIA received the MIT Indus Technovator's Award 2005. Ravishankar has also been instrumental in helping several foundations – like Satyam and Byrraju Foundations - adopt the science experiments program in other states. He is a member of the Tamilnadu State Secondary Education Curriculum Revision Committee and is also a key resource person of the Tamilnadu Science Forum. He is the author of many popular science and math books.

A glimpse into Dr.Ravishankar' s Work:
Ravishankar Arunachalam has worn many hats in his nine years as an AID volunteer.He was the co-editor of AID News, Executive Board projects coordinator, founder of the water cell at AID Austin, coordinator of post-earthquake efforts in Gujarat, and Hundred Block Plan coordinator. On his return to India in 2002, Ravishankar became the joint secretary at AID India. At AID India, he has worked on the secondary school science education program, on the equitech program on low-cost solutions for data collection, in tsunami relief & rehabilitation efforts, with Tamil Nadu Science Foundation. Dr. Ravi is a full time volunteer & worker for the Eureka Child Program.

Eureka Child Program:
In 1996, AID INDIA was registered in Chennai by Balaji Sampath and in 1997, after completing his PhD, he returned to India to work fulltime on issues of Education, Health and Livelihood. The first few years were spent in drawing more volunteers and building up a team in Tamilnadu. AID INDIA also focused a lot on health and education projects at this time. Right from the beginning we partnered with other NGOs to both learn from them as well as help them with our ideas and resources.
Chandra Anil, a hardware engineer quit her job and joined us fulltime. Ravishankar, who was part of AID in the US, quit his job at IBM and joined our work. A team of young college students and fresh graduates joined us – Damodharan, Gomathi, Prabha, etc. Our field team also developed with a number of experienced field coordinators who joined us – Samundeswari, Baskar, Srinivasan, etc. Educationists, Dr. V. Vasanthi Devi and Dr. R.Ramanujam also joined our team as advisors. Our work on the field began to grow. We expanded our base to about 1000 villages across the state. We also began to specialize more and more on education.
In 2004, we divided our group into 5 major teams:

1. Primary Education (Reading and Math)
2. Secondary Science Education
3. Pre-primary Education
4. Libraries and Community Learning Initiatives
5. Life Skills and Health Education Team

Later on to these teams were added a team on Secondary Math Education and a team on English. Each team worked on developing materials and programs and began to scale up their ideas. In 2004, we also formed Eureka Books – to publish and distribute our materials more widely. Thus , the Eureka Child Program was conceived and has executed a successful pilot program in 7 districts of Tamil Nadu.


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