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Be the change: Empower 360 children to improve their foundational numeracy
Numeracy is a life skill, and all children should have access to it. Imagine what it will be like to grow up in world where managing a budget or calculating a discount on a store item is a constant struggle?
Providing children with foundational numeracy skills is vital in deciding their life trajectory. When they fail to attain basic numeracy in the early years, they fail to catch up in the later classes due to wide learning gaps. This often increases the chances of them dropping out of school.
Drawing from our own Teach for India Fellowship experiences with 72 children of the Corporation Girls Higher Secondary school in Nungambakkam, Chennai, Alamelu Kathiresan and I started our very own Math Love project because every child deserves quality education.
We developed an experiential learning curriculum that was first piloted with 65 children belonging to low income communities. The steep improvement in their learning outcomes strengthened the belief in our learning model. We prototyped, tested and developed our innovative math curriculum with teaching learning materials, customized board games and fun journals aligned to every math concept - based on student and teacher feedback - for making math learning a unique experience for each and every child.
Numeracy is a life skill, and all children should have access to it. Imagine what it will be like to grow up in world where managing a budget or calculating a discount on a store item is a constant struggle?
Providing children with foundational numeracy skills is vital in deciding their life trajectory. When they fail to attain basic numeracy in the early years, they fail to catch up in the later classes due to wide learning gaps. This often increases the chances of them dropping out of school.
Drawing from our own Teach for India Fellowship experiences with 72 children of the Corporation Girls Higher Secondary school in Nungambakkam, Chennai, Alamelu Kathiresan and I started our very own Math Love project because every child deserves quality education.
We developed an experiential learning curriculum that was first piloted with 65 children belonging to low income communities. The steep improvement in their learning outcomes strengthened the belief in our learning model. We prototyped, tested and developed our innovative math curriculum with teaching learning materials, customized board games and fun journals aligned to every math concept - based on student and teacher feedback - for making math learning a unique experience for each and every child.
Our Success Stories
As Sadhana* moves the yellow coins onto the board, one by one, to add up the ones and tens and trace out the place values with her deft hands, she pauses for a minute to “see “ and “feel “ the math come alive.
“I got it.I can do it by myself,” declares Sadhana with an excited gleam in her eyes. The ten year old prompts the right answer in her booming voice. Her confidence says it all.
For someone who felt “crushed” while doing basic operations in school, this is her first victory in overcoming her fear. She has just mastered the art of addition with dyslexia.
When math is fun and inspires joy, no child is left behind
Take the case of Leo, all of 12 years, who claimed football was his first love. In his own words, math was like “prison”. He felt “trapped” whenever he had to open his math textbook and drown in the world of numbers.
While his previous schooling experience left him with distaste for maths, his resistance soon melted away when he realised he could change his mind set and get “unstuck”.
When he was given the opportunity to move around and work in teams - to connect concepts to his real life and see his learning in action – he realised math can fuel his creativity and push him to think outside the box just as in a game of football. And now Leo proudly says that he is passionate about two things in life: football and math! His scores underline his success story. From a 40% score in the baseline assessment, he scored 88.57 % in his final assessment and all this in just three months.
When we remove fear and judgement from the equation and encourage kids, children show their true potential and learn and grow with their peers.
As Sadhana* moves the yellow coins onto the board, one by one, to add up the ones and tens and trace out the place values with her deft hands, she pauses for a minute to “see “ and “feel “ the math come alive.
“I got it.I can do it by myself,” declares Sadhana with an excited gleam in her eyes. The ten year old prompts the right answer in her booming voice. Her confidence says it all.
For someone who felt “crushed” while doing basic operations in school, this is her first victory in overcoming her fear. She has just mastered the art of addition with dyslexia.
When math is fun and inspires joy, no child is left behind
Take the case of Leo, all of 12 years, who claimed football was his first love. In his own words, math was like “prison”. He felt “trapped” whenever he had to open his math textbook and drown in the world of numbers.
While his previous schooling experience left him with distaste for maths, his resistance soon melted away when he realised he could change his mind set and get “unstuck”.
When he was given the opportunity to move around and work in teams - to connect concepts to his real life and see his learning in action – he realised math can fuel his creativity and push him to think outside the box just as in a game of football. And now Leo proudly says that he is passionate about two things in life: football and math! His scores underline his success story. From a 40% score in the baseline assessment, he scored 88.57 % in his final assessment and all this in just three months.
When we remove fear and judgement from the equation and encourage kids, children show their true potential and learn and grow with their peers.
Sadhana* and Leo are one of the many bright spots in our path to change the way children learn and do math in government and low income private schools.
Why are we fundraising?
In order to increase our positive impact, this year, Alamelu and I have partnered with Vidhya Vidhai ( a not for profit organization working on sustainable whole school transformation programmes) for piloting our math programme for 85 students of class 3 and 4 in its partner school in Tondiarpet, North Chennai.
In order to sustain the impact of our programme, we will also be providing training to 15 math teachers in the school to impact 360 students.
Why are we fundraising?
In order to increase our positive impact, this year, Alamelu and I have partnered with Vidhya Vidhai ( a not for profit organization working on sustainable whole school transformation programmes) for piloting our math programme for 85 students of class 3 and 4 in its partner school in Tondiarpet, North Chennai.
In order to sustain the impact of our programme, we will also be providing training to 15 math teachers in the school to impact 360 students.
Get Involved in the Change
If you want to join hands with us in realizing our mission, you can support us to run the programme in the school this year. The following is the budget for running the program this academic year :
We will be sharing the impact report in this platform for all our supporters to see how their funds are utilized. In addition, we will also share quarterly updates to showcase the students work.
| Category | Cost |
| Materials Cost | 40000 |
| Operations Cost | 60,000 |
| Evaluation and Miscellaneous Cost | 10,000 |
| Total | 1,10,000 |
We will be sharing the impact report in this platform for all our supporters to see how their funds are utilized. In addition, we will also share quarterly updates to showcase the students work.
