Udavi School

Maggi Lidchi-Grassi, an esteemed Friend of Auroville, passed away on the 30th of September 2024, in the early hours of the morning at her residence behind Fertile, at the age of 94.

Aurosugan was born in Auroville. After completing an MBA in hospital administration, he worked at the Aravind Eye Hospital for many years. Recently he returned to Auroville and set up a primary eye centre here with ambitious plans to eliminate blindness in Auroville and the bioregion.

Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan has been an executive of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research (SAIIER) since August 2021 and was a SAIIER board member from 2016 to 2020.

Sriman Kota and Anupama Jagadeesh both arrived in Auroville four years ago and happened to meet some time later at STEM Land while exploring how they could best contribute their energies and skills to Auroville.

On February 24th, Sanjeev Aggarwal passed away at the age of 70 in JIPMER, after a cardiac arrest. Sanjeev came to Auroville at the end of 1981, cutting short a successful career as a High Court lawyer in New Delhi.

Partha was one of the first local youngsters to join Auroville. After teaching in Auroville’s schools, he’s now part of the Working Committee, and runs Neem Tree Café.

Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan is the initiator of the STEM Land educational experiment, (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) which we covered at its inception six years ago [see Auroville Today # 317].

Auroville receives a minimum of 300 volunteers per year from more than 30 nationalities and this number is increasing every year. An official volunteer (registered with Savi) works at least 24 hours per week in one occupation from 120 work positions available in Auroville.

Thamarai, which means 'lotus' in Tamil, is an Auroville educational and health project in the bioregion. There were challenges in 2016 when the Thamarai centre had to shut down in Edayanchavady.

In a quiet back street of Edayanchavadi village there is a neat house. Beside it is a beautiful garden of plants and creepers with a magnificent statue of Ganesh.

Just as much it fills my heart with joy to see a sapling poke its head out of the ground and slowly grow and unfurl its leaves to the light, so also it gives me immense joy to see a new educational initiative take root and steadily grow each year.

One offering I had always wanted to make to Auroville was the Ganga Yatra experience. Why? Firstly, I have always had a fascination with the Himalayas and the Ganges.

The deeper vision behind Food Link, an activity of the Auroville Farm Group is to create community by linking the residents of Auroville to the farmers through educational initiatives.

Artists Ok and Orly and Mark from the Upcycling Studio exhibited ‘upcycled products’, or products made from waste, at Udavi School. The exhibition showed what can be done with tetrapaks (used in making stools and in building construction), with waste plastics (used in cushions) and discarded audio tape (used for making bags and hats).

All you need to be a poet in Sanjeev’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Land is a love of solving problems and abstractions.

A friend of mine would regularly examine the annual 21st February bonfire to see if the coming year would be a good or a bad one for the Auroville community.

My name is Manjula, I was adopted at a young age by Sanjeev and Miriam, who have lived in Auroville for a long time. The Auroville experiment on human unity in diversity started right at home.