by AYUDH Europe

With so many global challenges facing today’s youth - climate change, financial instability, a global pandemic and cultural clashes - AYUDH Europe felt compelled to come together while apart and ACT! They want change, and they want it now.

Achieving Tomorrow, Today was the project born from this desire. The goal is to compel and motivate this generation of young people and equip them with the right skills and tools to reach their goal. In a world where it is easy to feel alone and overwhelmed by life’s challenges, youth need to connect and come together to find their full potential. This will inspire a new generation of effective leaders who are engaged both in grassroots activism and on socio-political levels.

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has become the first Indian university to partner with the European Union's Human Brain Project (HBP). There are 143 universities in Europe working together to understand brain function and develop solutions to better comprehend and cure brain diseases. The project is funded by the EU.

Functional signals directed by magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques are widely used in specialty hospitals and advanced clinics to monitor brain activity noninvasively. However, to connect these signals to the underlying activity of brain cells or neurons has been a challenge.

The voices of both women and men from villages across India were heard as they made the decision to take part in UN Women’s 16-day campaign of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. With partners around the world, they carried the theme of “Orange the World: End Violence against Women and Girls”.

Dr Bhavani Rao is the UNESCO Chair in Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita University). With AMMACHI Labs staff in the villages, they were able to galvanize people to record moving video messages with their phones. Participants spoke about the urgent need to denounce gender-based violence and called for unity and activism.

With its launch today, India's COVID-19 vaccination drive is the largest of its kind in the world. The District of Ernakulam, Kerala and Amrita Hospital have formed a unique Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to vaccinate health care workers there.

The Kadavanthara Urban Public Health Center will be managed by Amrita Hospital and set up in a way that other health centers can easily emulate. It is equipped with medical teams, an ambulance, necessary physical facilities and awareness posters.

Kochi, Kerala, India

Amrita Hospitals and AMMACHI Labs have collaborated to develop from scratch a type of protection equipment for healthcare workers that will be much more affordable in developing countries. It protects from infection via aerosolized virus particles, and of course, is of urgent need during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The kit is called PAPR - short for Powered Air Purifying Respirator - and is used to supply purified air to medical professionals in infection-prone areas. PAPRs are generally safer, more comfortable, and reusable as compared to the PPEs (personal protective equipment) used in conjunction with N95 masks. But the high price has meant they have not been widely used in developing nations.

Australia

There is more love in this world than hatred. More beauty than ugliness. More innocence than guilt. With this in mind, a First Nations Yuin Elder decided to lead the restoration of trees and plants in areas devastated by Australia’s massive bushfires last summer.

“To care for our primary Mother that births all we need to survive and be nourished - this responsibility belongs to all people,” says Uncle Max, as he is respectfully known.

Stanford University, one of the world's leading teaching and research institutions, has ranked five scientists with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham among the global top 2% in their respective fields. Stanford acknowledged Dr Maneesha Ramesh, Dr Shanti Nair, Dr R Jayakumar, Dr N Radhika and Dr Madhav Dutta for the quality of their research.

Though shrinking in availability on a global basis, fresh water is still used every day for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing. In the agricultural sector, it is also needed for watering crops and caring for livestock.

In villages across India, these requirements are usually met by women and girls who fetch water on a daily basis from the nearest sources. These vary from open wells, nearby streams, communal taps or public handpumps.

For the first time in more than 30 years, Amma has not been able to travel on her international tours due to COVID-19. Usually Amma travels to Europe in the fall, so this year the volunteers found another way to make a difference in the world at this challenging time.

They held a charity walk across October and November to raise money for Embracing the World's humanitarian initiatives, with participants in Israel joining in. They envisioned walking the 9,000 kilometers between them in Europe to Amma in India.

Volunteers with Amma Mexico in Cancun were accustomed to holding regular soup kitchens to help people living in poverty in their area. However with social distancing as the main concern, the coronavirus pandemic has put that action on hold. To bridge the gap, the volunteers are preparing boxes of groceries and basic necessities to drop off at people’s homes.