Mumbai 2021 March :Due to Pandemic Education for underprivileged students have come to a complete standstill. They have no School, Lectures, Teachers, Books or even basic stationeries. There are a variety of options available for students studying in private institutions; however, there are none that specifically have students studying in Government Schools as their target audience.
For many of the underprivileged children’s parents, food and other essential items have taken higher priority than education. Children are forced to dropout and child labour.Early marriage of girl child are up in the Pandemic.
Even after we have the vaccine the lives of these children and their families will not return to normal straight away.
SMS India Pvt Ltd, (SMS group Germany subsidiary), a leading plant supplier to the metallurgical industry and Spherule Foundation a non profit organization joined hands to help govt school students whose academic growth was put to a halt due to the lockdown and are on verge of dropping out.
Spherule Foundation along with CSR partner, SMS India Pvt Ltd, helped 1000 students of Govt schools by providing them stationery kits and workbooks for the entire academic year. To all needy students they are providing monthly mobile data packs so that students can attend online classes. For Students who do not have an android phone they are providing access to Tabs through their educators, who conduct classes in communities and give access to Tabs and the internet to such students.Currently under this project they are running 4 educational centres in Pune (Mundhwa and Hadapsar slums) and 2 Centers in Kolkata city.
In these centers they conduct many extracurricular activities along with regular academic classes. All students are provided Free digital education through a learning app “InstaShala” developed by Spherule Foundation. InstaShala makes learning fun and easy for students and has content from Grade 1 to Grade 10 of Maharashtra and West Bengal Board.
Under this project they are generating awareness around the importance of education and also counselling parents so that they encourage their children to study.
Along with Parents they are also training government schools teachers on
➔ Digital teaching : whatsapp, google forms, google drive etc
➔ Content creation : presentations and video recording with basic editing.
➔ Upload videos on youtube and on learning App.
➔ How to use google meet/zoom.
So that they can take online education and use available softwares for teaching.
Now as schools have partially begun, they have also started providing Oximeter, Thermal gun and sanitisers to schools so that students can safely come and study.
With this project they aim to reverse dropouts and bring underprivileged students back to schools and will continue this effort in coming years too.
