April 6, 2023
KGPians Empowering Rural Communities
IITKGP Foundation
Over many years, KGPians Indrajit Dutt and Tarun Debnath (Class of 1979; Physics and Chem Engineering respectively) have laid the foundations of a self-help group movement in Bengal whose sole objective is to empower the rural underprivileged women and help them with skilling that will enable them to be entrepreneurs and thereby improve on their standard of living. This movement has grown and was organized into what became the Calcutta Society for Professional Action in Development or SPADE in 1994. Today, SPADE is a fairly large organization with more than 100 volunteers working as skilled teams, working across villages in Bengal and Tripura. SPADE partners with OXFAM, CARITAS (Germany), UNICEF and many other NGOs and government organizations. Visit their website to look at some photos of their many projects.