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Meet AID Saathi Dhanada Mishra |
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While earning his PhD from Michigan in 1995, Dhanada Mishra started Sustainable Economic and Educational Development Society (SEEDS), to work on grassroots development in Orissa. Dhanada visited their first project, a school in Kalahandi district, and met people facing abject poverty to the point of hunger deaths. Later SEEDS and AID joined hands to respond to the Orissa cyclone. Dhanada, then in Sydney, started AID in Australia.
In 2003 Dhanada's family and AID-Sydney volunteer Peter Bakos moved to Orissa to work directly with AID. Dhanada joined a Technology Institute and sought to draw new talent towards development work. Peter, then an AID Saathi, worked with artisans and persons with disabilities on livelihood programs. Together he and Dhanada kept in touch with NGO partners in Orissa. While working at JITM, an engineering college in Gajapati district, Dhanda and Peter set up the AID Rural Technology Resource Center (ARTRC), now a hub of production, demonstration, and training in a variety of rural technologies.
Children in Rasuru village see moon and planets through telescope, helped by AID Saathi Dhanada Mishra
In 2007, Dhanada left his position as principal of JITM and became an AID Saathi. He works on education through Pratham's “Learn to Read” campaign, rural technology and vocational training, and livelihoods through NREGA and RTI awareness and training.
Dhanada writes, “Some things have gone to my plan and some things have panned out differently, but every day has brought new challenges, opportunities and satisfaction of being in service to the society. These few months have been some of the most exciting times of my life so far.”
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