Do you know? World-wide 250M primary school children are unable to read... According to Pratham ASER test, 58% of class 3 children in India cannot read grade 1 level text. 

Technology: Each school is given BodhaGuru NjoyReading Kit, a completely Made in India electronic learning toy with audio and activity enabled paper books. Each book is designed by pedagogy experts and helps students to learn & practice reading skills in a group mode shared within the school. There are different books to support students at various learning levels – starting with  akshar/alphabets, simple words, Gunimtalu, words without matra, words with matra, short sentences, long sentences and so on.  Each book starts with a moral based short story (or a rhyme, poem) followed by learning concepts and simple learning activities. An app is also given to volunteers to conduct reading test, extract usage data and share reports.

Human Passion: The teachers are trained on how to use the kit effectively within the classroom at the start of the program.  Regular visits are done by our volunteers to the schools to support teachers on any issues and help teachers to use the technology in an effective way.  A time-table is made to effectively share the kit across classrooms and various groups are formed within the classroom. On a day-to-day basis, a group of students (say 4-5 students) share a kit and sit around it. Based on the school teachers’ guidance, they place a particular book on the kit (say Gunimtalu book) and engage with it by pressing visual indicators marked on the book and learn in an engaging way. Additionally volunteers conduct baseline test and post test to measure the learning improvement & share feedback with the teachers. They also extract the usage data from the kit by connecting an app on their smartphone/tablet to the kit. This way  money collected to usage hours to learning improvement can be tracked - to effectively measure the effectiveness of the program. Additionally we work with school management committees (SMC) to strengthen it and build the capacity of headmasters  by connecting them with various expertise in the field of education and also build on the support received from the SMC group.

Experience: We are already running this program 160 govt primary schools in Sangareddy, Siddipet and Medak districts of Telangana. We are having a full 360 degree approach by working with head-masters, teachers, students and parents, with support from concerned government officials.   We are getting very encouraging results from all the stakeholders and hence planning to scale-up the program in the same district(s) through this campaign.

Budget Break-up: To maintain the transparency and value the money and time given by the donors, here are the details about the present campaign. 

We plan to work in 120 government primary schools in rural India (Telangana state - Sangareddy, Siddipet and Medak districts) and aim to reach out to approximately 12000 students in this school session year (2018-19). 

The cost per each school is divided into following components:

Volunteer stipend and admin cost:  INR 550 per month x 4 months =  INR 2200 (Note: one volunteer shared across 40 schools in a given mandal)

Technology (kit, app):     INR 7000 

Fundraising Platform Cost (including payment gateway & taxes):  INR 800  (appx 8% of the total money raised)