EarthSight Foundation has launched a series of events named “Satellite in Your Hand” aimed at generating curiosity among the non-geospatial communities to come together and learn about the value of Earth observation and geospatial information.
Several such programmes are conducted for grassroots village and urban development stakeholders. Through these events, several organisations are now inclined to use geospatial information to enhance the effectiveness and impact of their work.
In 2023, the EarthSight Foundation conducted a massive outreach event in Pune (India) in collaboration with the NRSC/ ISRO on the sidelines of the Annual Symposium of the Indian Satellite in Your Hand: Society of Geomatics and the Indian Society of Remote Sensing. DeepStambh Charitable Trust, actively working in over 100 villages, contributed to the programme as an outreach partner.
The event brought together participants comprising village leaders (sarpanch), progressive farmers, rural development organisations, government officials, representatives of corporate social responsibility (CSR), NGOs, educational institutes, school principals and teachers, researchers, students and industries involved in diverse fields, including financial institutes.
The participants came from several districts of Maharashtra, including the farthest district like Chandrapur. The workshop is conducted in the local language to take on board non-science audiences. It triggered several ideas and partnerships to enhance the value of geographic information and space-based technologies to the last-mile stakeholder and promote geospatial thinking at all levels.
In December 2023, the “Satellites in Your Hand” programme was also presented to the 500 women leaders in the ‘Parliament House’ of India as a part of the programme “She is the Change Maker – Panchayat se Parliament tak”, which is a pan-India initiative of the National Commission for Women (NCW) to improve leadership skills of grassroots women political leaders all levels, gram panchayats (village level) to parliament members and political workers including office bearers of National/State political parties.
