Swastyayan, meaning a fight to eradicate the ills of our society is a social commitment project of Assam Don Bosco University. It is initiated with an affirmed belief that the constituent members of the university, namely, faculty, staff and students have the potential to contribute meaningfully to development and transformation in the society. Swastyayan is part of the larger free and voluntary community engagement and service of Assam Don Bosco University (ADBU), which was started in 2013 in order to address the need felt by students and faculty of the ADBU to extend a helping hand to the community children around the University.
Over the years Swastyayan has grown stronger and widened its reach. A Community Self Help Week- Fund Raising Programme, started in January 2015 with an objective to make Swastyayan a self-reliant and self-sustaining programme has become a regular feature of the programme. During Self-Help Week, different activities like challenging fun games, car washing, and share-a-pakoda, momo and food fest would be organized. Thanks to the enthusiastic participation from the students, faculty and the neighbouring villages, Swastyan has been a self-sustained and self-reliant programme.
In 2018, it was expanded to include home-based tutorship by faculty and student volunteers for 20 high school students of Hatimura village in the Dimoria Development Block.
The programme have intervened in the following areas:
- Free Tutorial classes for high school students in 4 subjects for high school students: Mathematics, Science, Social Science and English
- Catered to the educational needs of 926 high school students at an average of 100 children per year since 2013
- 693 faculty and students have volunteered since 2013
- A certificate course on Computer Literacy has been availed by 15 children
- 33 children have been taken for an educational tour to Guwahati planetarium, Don Bosco Institute, and Cotton College
- Personality development and life-skill sessions on career goals, life-skill development, gender justice, tobacco de-addiction, singing, dancing and painting, etc have been conducted annually.
- Various types of competitions like; games, drawing, essay writing, Poem and Story Writing, singing and dancing competition.
- This endeavour has also been recognised as a best practice model towards reduction of inequality in society by the International Association of Universities (IAU) (for more information kindly refer: http://iau-hesd.net/sites/default/files/documents/higher-education-paving-the-way-to-sd-iau-2017.pdf
