Ramkrishna Mission to step up value education programme; training hub in Gurugram

Ramkrishna Mission has decided to set up a full-fledged institute as it scales up its value education for students and teacher training programmes in association with the Education Ministry.

The Vivekananda Institute of Values (VIVA) will come up at Gurugram, adjoining the national capital, and serve as a training hub for the Awakened Citizen Programme, implemented in more than 5,000 schools across the country.

In a bid to promote values such as harmony, peace, compassion and humility, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ramakrishna Mission in 2014 to implement the ACP.

“In order to cater to the growing need for the structured programs for various groups of citizens, an institute is being built to serve as a training hub,” Swami Shantatmananda, Secretary of the Ramkrishna Mission, Delhi said.

The Rs 22 crore project would help address an enormous gap in the educational system, he said.

The programme has since impacted over ten lakh students, trained 41,000 teachers across more than 5,000 schools, including Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Kendriya Vidyalaya and schools in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan.

The ACP encourages every individual to think and discover the values which they would like to live by rather than being told what is “right” and “wrong”, the RK Mission said.

It said proper facilitation practices by teachers using common daily life situations trigger the students’ minds to think and reflect the situations from various perspectives, participate and learn through peer discussions and help them make responsible choices in life.