The University of Pune in collaboration with Queen Mary's Technical Institute (QMTI) will now offer a one year diploma course in management, "Diploma in Industrial Administration and Service Management" for disabled soldiers, ex-servicemen Personnel Below Office Rank (PBOR) and their dependents.

The Raison d'etre behind this course is the employability of disabled soldiers, ex-servicemen and their dependents in the current market environment should increase manifold. This course will help to change the mindsets of the military men to civil working life. This course shall ensure them suitable jobs in many sectors e.g. Security,
management, retail management, banking and insurance services.

Joh desh ke kaam na aaye, woh bekar jawani hai”

PUMBA in association with DeepGriha Foundation and WakeUpPune - an NGO is organizing a one day event on 8th March in PUMBA about spreading HIV/AIDS awareness. The event will be held in the Department on the campus of University of Pune.

This event will include programs like PPTs and interactive sessions on HIV, AIDS, Sex & Sexuality etc. apart from Quizzes and Games throughout the day.

OLPC (originally a group at the Media Lab of MIT, spearheaded by Nicholas Negroponte) proposed to design a low cost laptop intended for use by children in developing nations.

In India, the first school to get about 20 laptops is in a small village in Maharashtra called Khairat.

Reliance Telecom has been actively involved in getting this first implementation started.

“The greatest gift you can give someone is your time; because when you give someone your time, you are giving them a part of your life that you will never get back”

With an aim towards making a difference to the society and aiding sustainable agriculture, I came across a unique model plan already in practice by a Thane based school teacher, Ms. Rashmi Menon. Ms. Menon has devised a very simple model which enables us, the urban affluent citizens, to contribute and give it back to the society. We all are aware of the destitute condition of farmer community in some of our villages. The sole bread earner finds himself helpless and in meagre situation, unable to buy basic starting input materials like seeds, fertilizers even today, inspite of numerous ventures of corporates building farm level linkages.

Keeping in tune with the theme of Natsem '07, "SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF CORPORATE SECTOR", few PUMBAites have done their bit long before NatSem commenced.

Here's a curtain raiser video on the recently held
National Seminar 07 - Social Responsibilities of Corporate Sector

If you are unable to view the video in Internet Explorer, try using Firefox

or

paste the following URL in Windows Media Player (using File -> Open URL OR Ctrl-U),

http://www.pumba-alumni.com/files/videos/national-seminar07.wmv

Kiva started as an experiment after Stanford Business School students Matt and Jessica Flannery traveled to East Africa to review projects for the microlender Village Enterprise Fund. What started as an experiment is now attracting lot of attention from global media.

One of things Pumba students could do as a project is tie-up Indian NGOs in similar activities as partners to Kiva.