Humanitarian Programs Launched on Amritavarsham 60

Amrita Self-Reliant Villages (Amrita SeRVe)—is a “village adoption” program through which the Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM) has selected 101 villages throughout India with the goal of helping them establish the required infrastructure to become self-reliant role-model villages for the country.

A Rs. 50-crore [$8 million US] relief-and-rehabilitation program for the flood-ravaged Kedarnath region of Uttarakhand, pledging to rebuild 500 houses in 42 villages, as well as establish other infrastructural aid.

MAM also extended its pensions program by 10,000 beneficiaries—from 59,000 to 69,000.

MAM extended its scholarships-for-the-poor program by 5,000 beneficiaries—from 41,000 to 46,000 beneficiaries.

MAM provided Rs. 100,000 in financial aid to each family bereaved by two recent disasters in Kerala: a landslide in Idukki and a fishing-boat accident in Alappuzha.

MAM pledged to conduct Rs. 50 crore [$8 million US] in totally free transplants, heart surgeries and cancer treatments through AIMS Hospital.

And it also unveiled many prototypes its various R&D departments have been working on for the benefit of humankind, including Amrita Mitra, an inconspicuous personal safety system that alerts police and family when the wearer hits a panic button, and Amrita Spandanam, a wireless ECG-monitoring system for heart patients, amongst others. The prototypes for these and other innovations released on the birthday have been designed so as to keep manufacturing costs as low as possible so that they may eventually be provided free to the poor and at low cost in general.

The celebrations were also home to a three-day ritual prayer for world peace.