Team Siliconindia

• Mari State University, Russia, signs MoU with India’s Max Healthcare to advance medical education and skill exchange.
• Collaboration to include curriculum upgrades, clinical exposure, English fluency training, and visits to Max Healthcare facilities in India.
• Supported by Rus Education, the partnership strengthens Indo-Russian healthcare ties and benefits students and practitioners in both nations.

The MBD Group has launched its newest social initiative, 'Robotics Lab on Wheels', to bring robotics and STEM education directly to disadvantaged schools in urban and rural India. Initiated by the CSR wing of MBD Group, the Ashok Malhotra Charitable Trust, this mobile lab under its 'Love to Learn by MBD' initiative seeks to close the gap in provision of experiential, technology-driven learning to schools that do not have the infrastructure and financial resources to do so. The project is part of 'Ashok Karya', a sustained social change initiative developed to perpetuate the legacy of the group's founder, Ashok Kumar Malhotra.

The Robotics Lab on Wheels is comprised of an enclosed, specially designed van with all the equipment needed to facilitate hands-on STEM learning, such as Arduino boards, sensors, motors, and robotics kits. Its portability allows it to access both distant rural areas and high-density urban neighborhoods, making sure that students of all backgrounds are able to interact with advanced technology.

Throughout a span of ten months, qualified facilitators will lead 24 interactive classes in school classrooms or activity areas, turning these comfortable spaces into innovation centers. The course is divided into five modules, starting with the fundamentals of robotics and moving on to more complex domains like IoT and automation. The students who attend the course will be evaluated and certified at the end, representing the initial stepping stone into the domain of emerging technologies.

Opening the initiative, MP Lahar Singh Siroya complimented the initiative as a great step towards democratizing access to future-ready learning, insisting that robotic and STEM education needs to go beyond the elite schools to the furthest reaches of the nation.

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MBD Group Chairman Satish Bala Malhotra emphasized that the project is more about giving the children than teaching them mere technical skills confidence, imagination, and the confidence to change their own lives. Managing Director Monica Malhotra Kandhari called the program a way to bring STEM from abstraction to real, hands-on experience, and Joint Managing Director Sonica Malhotra emphasized its function as a bridge for the digital divide and to encourage students in small towns to think and lead with intention.

The Ashok Malhotra Charitable Trust and MBD Group intend to take the program to more than 1,000 schools, benefiting more than one lakh students in the 10-to-16 age group over the next five years. Providing instructor-facilitated, hands-on learning in robotics, coding, engineering, and innovation, the initiative hopes to open up opportunities for social mobility and prepare the next generation to succeed in a technology-driven world.

The launch ceremony was attended by more than 100 principals, educationists, and students, and included a panel discussion on STEM education with leading voices from academia, industry, and social development.