AID Pilani Chapter

We as BITSians, are engineering students and are also a chapter of AID. After recollecting the experiences in AID annual conference in Bangalore, we think that being the newcomers, we learnt following important thing -

AID is an organization consisting of full time activists as well as career professionals and both of these classes act in harmony for the single ultimate goal of AID – the quest of solutions for solving India's problems and for improving the existing solutions. AID works in different directions with different types of people, these directions are respected. AID also carries out experiments in implementing its solutions and tries to better them. The apparent lack of a unique direction actually does not leave a weak point in AID's functioning, but becomes its strength and support for experiments. None of us knows the root of every of our social problems or the ultimate path that will lead to the solutions. But we believe in putting efforts for what little we know and continuously learn.

Through the learning of our respected torchbearers like Mr. Balaji Sampath, we understand that

• A social problem is generally harder than it appears.
•  While implementing solutions, we have to be very professional in measurement and feedback of our efforts.
• And of course, many a times, simple solutions work out though they may be the most difficult ones to find.

We have great minds in Dr. Ravi Narayan and Dr. Thelma who make us realize the need to dedicate energies in creating demand as well as creating a system to respond to those demands. That calls for two classes of activists, demand creators and system administrators and harmony between these classes.

So where do we stand as a student chapter? What should be our role in AID?

We think that being students of a technical university, we can make use of our technical advantage for tackling social problems. Also staying amongst the brightest students of the country gives us access and the chance to create potential change-makers, the future leaders and the who's who. Being part of an organization which believes in experimentation and prototyping also gives us a lot of chance to come up with innovative ideas and implement them over subsequent levels.

We totally understand our responsibility and expectations from this chapter and under the guidance of the senior chapters of AID, we hope to meet the same.