iLearn
iLearn EDUCATION MAY TAKE A PAUSE.....BUT LEARNING CONTINUES
Outreach
5000 plus children
Duration
May 2020 - cont...
The pandemic has exposed inequities—kids not having internet access or a quiet space to study or their basic needs met. It’s amplified things by putting their families in more dire circumstances in terms of unemployment and food insecurity, conditions that can hamper students’ willingness and ability to learn and to succeed in school. We worry that under these and remote learning conditions the number of children who don’t finish primary school might increase.
Since ARCH has a wider reach out to the students from less privileged section under various educational initiatives, it is even more important for us to step up to take our cause even further. One side where we wish to ensure every child is connected to any/some form of learning, the other side we ponder on how do we follow all the rules of social distancing and the laws around epidemics while continuing to serve our students.
iLearn, an initiative by ARCH Development Foundation, is committed to address and overcome problems of child labor, forced school dropouts, lack of interest, and low self-esteem. We aim to change this belief by building blocks for a better and brighter future through education and selfdevelopment.
iLearn is connecting with children in two ways -
- Community classes to ensure every child we can reach to is connected with the learning
- Adopting the online meeting platform Zoom in partnership with various organizations and experts, a priority was to adopt the pedagogy to ensure students would engage and participate in experiments and learner-led discussions.
Pahel
Pahel – A step towards Sustainability
Supack Industries collaborated with ARCH Foundation in 2015 for the implementation of Project Umang in 5 schools of Rajkot near their plant area. In 5 years of collaboration, this project has achieved many milestones and one of them is achieving 0% drop-out rate in targeted schools.
In 2021, Pandemic has raised many more challenges in targeted villages and the project Umang is now transformed into a community-level intervention – ‘Pahel’ focusing on –
Vaccination campaign – As per the preliminary study done in the targeted villages, it was realized that despite rising infections and death rates, vaccine hesitancy prevails in the rural part of Rajkot, owing to insufficient information or the myths related to the same. Project Pahel targets to achieve 90% vaccination in targeted villages through an awareness campaign, coordination with PHC and sub-centers, and mobilizing the community during vaccination.
Digital literacy – A dynamic and integrated initiative to create digital awareness, education, and capacity program especially focusing on youth helping them to understand the use of digital technologies, its useful aspects, and also the online threat and safety.
Education – With a long gap of one year and no foreseen improvement in the current situation, community classes will reach out to students from all 5 villages to engage them in the different learning programs. This initiative will reduce the digital gap and provide a learning opportunity to every child equally.
Project Umang
Project Umang
LOCATION
Ankleshwar, Padra (Vadodara), Vadodara rural and urban, Rajkot
OUTREACH
Government Primary schools
School closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a complete disconnect from education for the vast majority of children in the rural area. The government has recommended moving to online learning as a stop-gap arrangement to evade any disruptions in academic calendars. Technology and smart classrooms are not only transforming education in highly paid private schools, but it is gradually making inroads in government schools with the help of organizations working in the field of education.
In collaboration with Bostik India Pvt. Ltd, ARCH Development Foundation has initiated a program ‘
Umang – Joy of learning’ to ensure the safe return of the children to school when it reopens.
The project will be focusing on –
1. Transformation of conventional learning to Digital learning by developing smart classrooms in 5 Government Primary schools
2. Improving the learning level of students through community classes.
3. Creating an eco-system in community and school to promote the holistic development of children
Project Umang aims to promote a Joyful experience of learning to every child. It aspires to make the students ready to join the schools when they re-open without having the fear of not having learned anything. This activity supports the children’s learning as a bridge that can connect them easily to the continuity of learning once schools reopen. To ensure that maximum students are part of this program various stakeholders like parents, teachers, and school management are also involved in this project to make it one big community-driven initiative.
EduCode
EduCode
Outreach - 350 Plus students
As the world progresses into the 21st century, we are layered with technology in the form of programming becoming a critical and essential aspect of our lives. Coding is the language of much of the world around us. The time has come for children to develop the skills needed to not only use computers but to understand how they work.
EduCode introduces children to the concept of coding and makes them feel confident about their ability to grow in this area. By the end of the program, children can develop small games that they could play by themselves and share the same with their friends.
They know the basics of coding that are applicable in all programming environments e.g. control statements, variables, message passing, reacting to events, etc.
EduCode uses Scratch programming environment. Scratch was designed by the researchers at MIT to make it children friendly. It has been under development for 15 years and it is used worldwide as the first programming environment for children.
Through this program, children start with basics of Scratch and write simple programs that do things like "make a cat roll on the screen". They then move on to control statements that can make programs do different things based on user interaction. For example, simulating a bouncing ball or playing a number guessing game. This would be followed by message passing and event handling that is useful in making games. This way, children can write complex games like ice hockey or break the wall, etc.
Anandi Resource Centre
Anandi Resource Centre
Total Outreach
100 students from 9th & 10th grade
Locations – Padra-Vadodara
Due to poor teaching at government schools, it has been observed that students reaching class 10th do not know even fundamental of subjects like Maths, Science and English. Naturally they lose interest in subjects and ultimately add the number of either dropout, fail or pass outs with very poor marks in their matriculation. 10th is the “Gate-Way” of carrier for any student. If a student does not get good marks in Matric (10th) exams or fails the exam then, it is very difficult for the students to get in to good college for higher studies.
Objective of Anandi Resource Centre is -
-
To improve the academic skills and linguistic proficiency of the students in various subjects especially science, math, English and social science.
-
To raise their level of comprehension of basic subjects to provide a stronger foundation for further academic work
-
To strengthen their knowledge skills and attitudes in such subjects, where quantitative and qualitative techniques and activities are involved so that the necessary guidance and training provides under the programme may enable the student to come up to level necessary for pursuing higher studies efficiently
MINI SCIENCE LAB
MINI SCIENCE LAB
TARGET GROUPS
Government aided and corporation run school children and teachers
OUTREACH
40,000 students and 650 teachers
BRIGHTER WORLD LAB
BRIGHTER WORLD LAB ALL SET TO BRIGHTEN THE WORLD WITH PROJECT BRIGHTER WORLD LAB
TARGET GROUPS
Government primary schools
OUTREACH
20000 students, 150 teachers
Locations – Greater Noida, Ankleshwar and Mumbai
Keeping with our commitment to focus on education as a means for promoting rational thinking and building an exciting platform to develop curiosity, courage and creative environmental sensitivity amongst children we launched Project Brighter World Lab (BWL), in association with Covestro, in three locations of Greater Noida, Ankleshwar and Airoli (Mumbai).
The program was designed to instil three values amongst the youth:
Curiosity –
To fuel interest and allow kids to remain inquisitive we set up 20 Brighter World Lab in schools with more than 110 working models in each facility and designed a new approach for hands-on scientific learning amongst school students which encouraged them to explore and discover their own learning. As a chemical based company, Covestro was keen to promote the concept of chemistry in the budding minds, an objective which eventually shaped the USP of the BWL intervention – ‘Science Club’. We at ARCH created this unique proposition in all the beneficiary schools encouraging students to undertake Do-it-yourself activities based on principles of chemistry where they learnt novel ways to conduct experiments and surveys first hand. Seeing is believing and the the joy of doing and learning through practical observation proved to be sheer delight for the children.
Courage–
The project was designed to also hone spirit, confidence and competitiveness in students through interesting activities like competitions, debates and discussions that gave them a platform to present their thoughts, ideas and scientific point of view. The scale of these events was a new exposure for them which gave them self- assurance of their own abilities, a drive to excel, a sense of healthy competition and an opportunity to perform.
Colorful –
Science is beauty in sustainability and concept this was driven by introducing students to environmental safety, sensitivity and concepts of reduce, reuse and recycle using engaging aid of resources. We built this value by teaching students the true worth and importance of science and how it makes our life joyful and colourful.
Umang Activity & Resource Centre
Umang Activity & Resource Centre Issues addressed – Irregular / low attendance of students/reducing drop-outs,/improving learning
Total Outreach
4000 students
Targeted schools
Government primary schools
Anandi
Anandi At ARCH we believe that education beats at the heart of sustainability. As the name suggests, Project Anandi
Total Outreach
1800 plus students and 33 teachers
Targeted schools & Anganwadies
10 Schools and 9 Anganwadies
Locations – Padra (Vadodara), Ankleshwar & Chakan (Maharashtra)
At ARCH we believe that education beats at the heart of sustainability. As the name suggests, Project Anandi, in collaboration with Huntsman, is designed with an objective of creating an eco-system of holistic growth in child development by creating a joyful learning atmosphere. The major components of the project are
- To create an positive atmosphere in the school which encourages children to attend school everyday.
- Hands-on and activity based academic intervention covering math, language, social science and science to enhance learning abilities and interest.
- To ensure optimal utilization of existing school resources.
- To Work on capacity building of teachers which ensured sustainability of the project.
- To establish discipline in school though improvisation in systems and processes.
Our intervention with Project Anandi has been fruitful and successful in the last one year. From a festive Diwali Camp promoting creativity and innovation, a mega funfair instilling entrepreneurship in an engaging style, a science quiz raising the bar of healthy competition supporting analytical reasoning and finally a workshop endorsing recycling and waste management made Project Anandi a runaway success in the true sense.
The school kids were left with a never-before exposure to such interesting mediums of learning and having fun with a concrete purpose. In fact, the teachers have already noticed a positive curve in their learning graph. Parents who were earlier uninvolved in school have now shown an optimistic change of being proactive and encouraging in their child’s academic and co-curricular progress. It’s truly an ANANDI time for all!
WOW from the Waste
WOW from the Waste WOW from the waste is a stand-alone intervention by ARCH and focuses on introducing students and teachers to waste management
Total Outreach
800 students and > 200 teachers
Targeted schools
Government primary & secondary schools
WOW from the waste is a stand-alone intervention by ARCH and focuses on introducing students and teachers to waste management and the concept of making the best out of waste. They are oriented to recycle what would normally be tossed into dustbins each week and create awareness about looking at JUNK as a tool for science and innovation.
This new light on exploring waste encourages divergent thinking in children. It’s sheer joy to let them use plastic, buttons, metal objects, wooden pieces, screws etc. in innovative and out-of-the-box experiments and watch interesting outcomes.
This initiative further teaches schools and students to look at resource management while setting up science labs on a small budget. Indeed a fun way to learn!
Theatre for a cause
Theatre for a cause Students of government schools are generally exposed to rigid education curriculums that focus on subject
Total Outreach
300 students
Targeted schools
Government primary & secondary schools
ROBOTICS & ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP
ROBOTICS & ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP Children are untapped creative powerhouses. The robotics and electronics workshop is designed to channelize their creativity with relevant knowledge
Total Outreach
250 students
Targeted schools
Government primary & secondary schools
Children are untapped creative powerhouses. The robotics and electronics workshop is designed to channelize their creativity with relevant knowledge enabling them to make DIY projects on different subjects of their interest.
The outcome of this workshop has been very encouraging to say the least as the participants create novel models that lift their own understanding of concepts in science, engineering and technology.
With digital technology paving way for the future such a workshop is an eye opener for students to think of the unthinkable and build on inventions. So far 250 students belonging to government run primary and secondary schools have benefitted from the robotics and electronics workshops.