Page 95 - Swatantrata to Atmanirbharta : Lokmanya Tilak’s legacy

COVID wave some office bearers of DES wore PPE kits and
working with employees of the Pune Municipal Corporation,
went from house to house to check the COVID-19 patients.
During the pandemic, many NGOs were working in the
community to help the society. This, of course, was a matter of
pride. Tomorrow, when the history of the Coronavirus pandemic
will be written, not only the history of suffering of the masses,
but also the history of the work of these NGOs would be written.
A survey of 300 NGOs was carried out by about two hundred
teachers from various schools of the Deccan Education Society.
They interviewed these NGO office bearers and compiled a
book highlighting their volunteering activities. The Coronavirus
disaster caused many challenges. These challenges were
created in all areas like education, health, agriculture, trade,
industry, transportation, banking, law, etc. Hundred professors
from the Deccan Education Society decided to work on these
issues. Each professor chose a problem in a different area. A
comprehensive questionnaire was prepared with a view to get a
proper understanding of the issue. The questionnaire was sent
to several experts in the field and their answers were sought, and
a research paper was prepared on that basis. This research paper
not only outlined the problems, but also discussed what should
be done to solve these problems. As a matter of pride, 20 papers
have been published in various scientific and research journals.

The teachers were not able to teach students face-to-face
during the pandemic. At that time, thousands of licenses of
Microsoft software were bought by the society. We trained all the
teachers to use this software and started their online education
by giving this software to all the students from elementary
school to post graduate classes. Even in schools in the rural
areas, the online education of all the students was perfectly
conducted through this software without depriving any student
of education. Seeing this initiative of the Deccan Education
Society, the state government requested that the online teaching
skills of its teachers would be very useful to the students in rural
areas. Our teachers recorded the lessons of the entire year of the
10th, 11th, and 12th classes in the studio of Bal Bharati, and
the lessons were shown first on Geo TV and then on Sahyadri

93 Swatantrata to Atmanirbharata