Project RISHI is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit student-run organization at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The current goal of Project RISHI is to make sustainable change within Naga Valadia, a rural community in the Kutch region of Gujarat, India. Each summer Project RISHI sends a team of members to Naga Valadia to interact with and learn from the villagers. Upon returning from the village, Project RISHI boasts over thirty dedicated members on campus committed to crafting tailored solutions for the problems presented by the villagers. Members use the entire academic year to strengthen ties with the village through constant contact, and ideate a variety of initiatives to implement within the village in summer. In the past, USC Project RISHI has implemented tobacco de-addiction campaigns, literacy courses and an eye camp in collaboration with various enterprises in the Kutch and Los Angeles areas. This summer, RISHI’s focus shifts to a dental camp in conjunction with local dentists and nurses to improve oral hygiene within the village. We are also continuing on with our tobacco de-addiction campaign, and will use our dental camp as an outlet to educate the villagers on tobacco and promote eventual cessation.
India has started a nationwide initiative to become completely tobacco free, but with a population nearing 2 billion people, it is a great challenge to reach every person. Our dental camp is setup to educate the villagers of Naga Valadia about the oral issues that can be caused by tobacco usage. By providing dental screenings and surgeries from dental professionals in the region through our dental camp, we aim to combat the issues that they face from tobacco usage and fix some of the damage done in the past. We also hope to provide the education and basic tools such as toothbrushes and floss necessary to mitigate the problem in the future. Your donations will specifically be funding the medical equipment necessary to run our dental camp, providing alternative handouts to tobacco, including cost of surgeries, dental equipment, and covering the costs of dental kits complete with toothbrushes, floss, and tobacco-free lozenges to be handed out during our dental camp. We hope that you will join us in this journey to development and provide a donation. Each dollar donated is funding real change in the village of Naga Valadia, and we are excited for the opportunity to execute on our organization’s hard work this past year.
Learn more:
Website: https://www.uscprojectrishi.org
