Help Project Together We Build in empowering disadvantaged secondary school students and youth to become entrepreneurs.

We are a team of three Gandhi Fellows (Subhag Raj, Charu Madan & Jigisha Prajapati) working for Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF) in Surat. We work towards a common dream to bring social change in the field of education.

We work with India’s government schools to improve the pedagogical and leadership skills of Headmasters and Teachers. We are working in more than 1600 government schools in 8 states of India.

Gandhi Fellowship system was adopted by Kaivalya Education Foundation to facilitate the process of school change by working closely with the Principals engaged in the Principal Leadership Development Programme. Gandhi fellows provide on-ground training and coach principals and teachers. For more information visit our website here.

Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF) has  signed  Memorandum of Understanding with Gujarat government for State Transformation Program.

By which KEF will:

To know more about Gujarat operations of Kaivalya Education Foundation visit our website here.

Our schools are failing to provide students employability skills to achieve their long term career outcomes.

Equipping school students with employability skills addresses this gap and has the potential to alter their future.

Our solution for the problem we care about is to conduct a near-peer and full circle entrepreneurship mentoring after-school programme for secondary school students is a mix of theoretical and experiential learning methods.

We deliver a 90 minute session for children per week through our community youth mentors over the course of an academic year.

The curriculum is of two stage process:

The project-based experiential learning provides the children practical wisdom to deal with the challenges in their life.

The centre of our approach is child. We are teaching employability skills to our children who are in secondary/higher secondary school. While our children launch start-ups and earn revenue, they create businesses solely to practice and develop the habits to achieve their goals and definitions of success. All portion made from their ventures get donated to local charity.

Children from low-income communities face many challenges and barriers that business creation skills alone simply cannot adequately assist with. Our children are acquiring mentors and building support systems from their communities, learning skills and adopting habits for their life’s success.

We believe in the power of young go-getters. Our approach of channelizing the youth from the same communities for delivering our program is sustainable by paving way for dialogues in the community regarding the education and empowerment of children and youth. Selection of youth from the same communities helps us to make the youth more empathetic towards the children. We believe in building a community of change makers by uplifting the underprivileged children with the help of underprivileged youth from the same community have an effect of exponential empowerment.

While being a mentor, our youth not only receive initial training, but also ongoing coaching which prepares them for success in their career endeavours.

We work on a strong collaborative approach with local public and private schools and communities by making them aware about the challenges caused by the lack of social structures to support the need of children, and deploying the youth to step out and support the children for both of them to break the stereotypes and claim dignity to the place where they belong to.

We use a full circle mentoring approach, our community youth mentors (who are undergraduates) receive mentorship, training, and coaching that they hone through providing the same to our secondary school students.

Project Together We Build wants to nurture and foster children’s ability to creatively respond through entrepreneurship using our workshops, on-ground support and by creating a peer network of leaders. 

The objective of our mission is to provide skill based education to empower children from under-resourced communities.

We started it as a public system project during our fellowship, which is now fantastically exciting and empowering project for all of us involved, because we see a lot of youth who wanted to lead a life of purpose and a life dedicated to social change, which they are making through our entrepreneurship mentoring programme.

Our project idea won ‘The New Millionaire’ pitching competition conducted by Gandhi Fellowship & Piramal Foundation for Education Leadership (PFEL). The New Millionaire program by Gandhi Fellowship is in the hope of creating a new generation who will touch One Million lives over the next decade, each by leading positive social change agendas with creative problem-solving minds; and creating empathy for the constituents they are working with.

We are piloting the same idea through our Public Systems Project (PSP) during the second year of fellowship.

We are on a crusade to make a big difference and to grow our team. We ask you to join and help us in helping make this happen for a better future of our youth.

Together We Build follows a project based learning approach.

Each project will have three phases.

Per project we provide 6 sessions of 45 minutes each to our children and youth.

Each entrepreneurial project our children & youth undertake together will not exceed more than 5 weeks.

We try to conclude each project with a maximum of 10 interventions in the community and not exceeding 5 weeks.

 

We, Gandhi fellows work closely with the schools and communities which will help us evaluating the project. We will use evidence based competency mapping of youth mentors and children to evaluate our impact. 

Project Together We Build has targeted to reach 300 children, 30 youth mentors and volunteers in the next six months.

We are aiming to raise a total sum of Rs. 1,00,000. This sum would cover the cost of skill development sessions & industrial visits for our children and community youth mentors in the one year by experts. Miscellaneous expenditure areas include purchase of recreation materials, local transportation, stationary and supplies,refreshments, phone and internet provision, among other overheads.

Our students need your valuable contribution. We really look up to the help you can provide. Besides contributing to the project, it will be really great if you can spread the word around. Make some noise about ‘Together We Build’ campaign and let our children get what they deserve! Every contribution, small or big, counts.

To keep updated with our work, follow our facebook page here.