SAAJHI SAMAJH 5
Eye Health for Children - Leading through Knowledge
Event Highlights
- Panel discussion with experts on the theme
- Release of Report on ‘Teacher’s Perspective, Awareness and Understanding of Student’s Eye Health’
- 12th September 2021, Tuesday
Thank you for making it a success.
60 mins of topical discussion
Understand the significance of Eye Health Awareness in Schools from domain experts & educators
Learn, Interact & Share
Keynote Speaker's Profile
Mr CP Gurnani
CEO & MD, Tech Mahindra Ltd.
Mr CP Gurnani (popularly known as ‘CP’ within his peer group), is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tech Mahindra Limited. An accomplished business leader with extensive experience in international business development, start-ups, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, Mr. CP Gurnani (popularly known as CP) led Tech Mahindra’s transformation journey, and one of the biggest turnarounds of Indian Corporate History – the acquisition and merger of Satyam. In a career spanning of over thirty-six years, CP has held several leading positions with Hewlett Packard Ltd, Perot Systems (India) Ltd. and HCL Corporation Ltd. CP has also served as a Chairman of NASSCOM for the year 2016-2017. A chemical engineering graduate from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, he is a distinguished and active alumnus of the Institute. CP has also been felicitated with an honorary Doctorate degree by Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology. He also serves as an active Chairman of IIM Nagpur.
CP has been chosen as the Ernst and Young ‘Entrepreneur of the Year [Manager]’, CNBC Asia’s ‘India Business Leader of the Year’, Dataquest ‘IT person of the Year’– in 2013 and Business Standard ‘CEO of the Year’ in 2014. He was also awarded the ‘Best CEO of the Year’ at the Forbes India Leadership Awards held in 2015. A recent addition to the bucket was ‘Asia One Global Indian of the Year – Technology’ in 2016. CP was also listed among the top 100 global CEOs as part of The Wall Street Journal CEO Council 2016.
CP strongly believes in promoting child education. He is on the Board of the Tech Mahindra Foundation and has been actively guiding the foundation & its projects. CP, along with his wife Anita, have also founded ‘Titliyan’, an NGO located in Noida spreading smiles, happiness and education to more than 240 under privileged children.
Our Panelists
For this session, we have assembled a diverse panel of speakers comprising of leading industry experts including corporate veterans and professionals from the government, social sector and the civil society altogether.
Ms Lalitha Maurya
Panelist
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Ms Lalita Maurya
Leader, Mentor Teachers of Hindi Group
Presently the Leader of Mentor Teachers of Hindi Group, she teaches at the UNUV R-Block, New Rajinder Nagar Karol Bagh Zone of North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC). She holds a total of 12 years of experience in teaching class 5 with Hindi, English, Social Studies and Environmental Studies subjects. She strives to bring innovative teaching learning experience for her students in the classrooms.
Ms Prachi Gaur
Moderator
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Ms Preeti Monga
Founder CEO & Trustee, Silver Linings Trust
Blind since childhood, she is the Founder CEO & Trustee, Silver Linings Trust, who has been working towards education and empowerment of the blind, inclusion of disabled and prevention of blindness and directly as well as indirectly impacting millions of lives since 1987. Preeti is the first blind Aerobics Instructor in India, a celebrated Motivation Speaker and a highly effective counselor! Numerus prestigious awards have been bestowed upon her, including the National Award presented to her by the President of India for her ground breaking work towards employment and self – employment of people with disabilities in 2013. Also, she was honored with the Exceptional Achievement in Entrepreneurship Award by the Delhi Government in 2015. The ‘Red and White Bravery’ Award, the ‘Rajeev Gandhi Manna Seva’ Award and the Ashoka Fellowship are among some of her other significant achievements. She is also a nominated member of the Delhi State Advisory Board on Disability, and part of the Governing Council of the Skill Council of Persons with Disabilities.
About Saajhi Samajh 5
Introduction
World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment. This year, the World Sight Day will be observed on 14 October 2021 with the theme: Love your eyes.
1 billion people around the world have a preventable vision impairment or one that has yet to be addressed. Out of these, 90 million children across the globe have vision loss due to lack of eye care services. World Health Organization states that globally half the cases of blindness could have been prevented with early intervention. Therefore, early detection and addressing vision loss among children brings huge benefits – transforming lives, boosting educational attainment and enabling children to reach their full potential. Since children spend a considerable amount of their time in schools; school-based screenings can identify other vision issues, helping to get them addressed promptly. Without action, vision loss among children is projected to grow rapidly in the years ahead.
Teachers are therefore the frontline protection for a large population of school going children. School health programmes need to recognise this to create a pool of vigilant teachers and do capacity building with knowledge for the first level of scrutiny and intervention. This can play a significant role in promotion of eye health and in prevention of more serious diseases. The objective of these eye health programs can be to build awareness and knowledge around eye health issues, help with early detection and early warning, and enable the schools to strengthen the provision of improved eye healthcare services for the students.
On the occasion of World Sight Day, 2021, Tech Mahindra Foundation will release a research report on ‘Teacher’s Perspective, Awareness and Understanding of Student’s Eye Health’.
The objective of this study was to understand how the teaching community can play a more effective role in detection of vision related impairment and problems at the early age of children. In doing so, a research has been conducted with government school teachers of Delhi to identify perceptions, challenges, and solutions to eye health and related problems. The analysis is based on information drawn from primary data, key informant interviews and literature reviews.
TMF and its work towards creating happier and safer classrooms
Tech Mahindra Foundation (TMF), the CSR arm of Tech Mahindra Limited, resonates with this understanding. The Foundation is committed to creating happier and safer classrooms by empowering teachers, educators, and leaders in knowledge, skills, and attitude domains aiming for effective school governance. Through Shikshaantar, one of its flagship programs in Education, the Foundation has trained over 36,700 teachers of government schools in major cities of India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. In Delhi, the Foundation has been working in partnerships with the East Delhi Municipal Corporation since 2013, and with the North Delhi Municipal Corporation since 2018, by running the In-Service Teacher Education Institutes (ITEIs) on their behalf.
Various workshops under the Shikshaantar umbrella aim towards enhancing parental involvement, the capacity of teachers and teacher educators on leadership, pedagogical skills, and competencies related to subject teaching-learning. For creating a conducive and safe learning space, Foundation has initiated multiple interventions to create awareness about child safety, mental health awareness program, empowering teachers with counselling skills to ensure students well-being etc.
The Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of TMF has prepared a research report titled ‘Teacher’s Perspective, Awareness and Understanding of Student’s Eye Health’ based on a research study conducted by the Unit in 2020-21 in New Delhi. The report is focused on how school premises can be developed as safe and conducive learning spaces with appropriate Eye Health services for students with teachers being the catalysts and playing an important role to ensure the safety of children.
By utilizing TMF’s dynamic platform of teacher training and experience in healthcare skilling, The Foundation has launched its school safety program that imparts knowledge and training to teachers in First Aid, child safety guidelines, mental health awareness program, Mental Health Counselling, etc.
Saajhi Samajh – The Fifth Edition
Saajhi Samajh, the fifth edition will therefore release the research report. A diverse panel of speakers comprising key stakeholders across the board – school teachers, medical professionals, policy influencers, educationists will attempt to address the importance of school safety, role of a teacher and importance of eye health.
In the past, The Foundation has hosted four seminars with a focus on Teacher Development, bringing together an array of experts and specialists. These events, titled ‘Saajhi Samajh’ (or Shared Understanding), is the Foundation’s attempt towards creating a broader platform to enable advocacy through discourse and discussion on issues related and relevant to the development of teacher training and education in India.
The fifth edition of Saajhi Samajh – to be held on 14th October 2021 – will be conducted as a virtual Launch and Panel Discussion to be hosted online by Tech Mahindra Foundation.
Glimpses from Latest Edition of Saajh Samajh
Glimpses from Previous Editions of Saajhi Samajh
The previous edition of Saajhi Samajh, held in April 2018, was a resounding success, in which the Keynote Address was delivered by the then Director of Education, Govt. of NCT of Delhi, Ms. Saumya Gupta. A detailed report of this event is available here. The third edition of Saajhi Samajh was held on 3rd June 2020, wherein Mr. Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi delivered the keynote address, and was well accepted by the youth and academia (the detailed report can be downloaded here). The fourth edition of Saajhi Samajh was focused on enhancing First Aid in Schools and included a virtual launch of a school safety program and panel discussion, spearheaded by industry experts and educators. The research report released during the event is here. The fifth edition of Saajhi Samajh was conducted on the occasion of World Sight Day, wherein a panel discussion with experts was organised and an exclusive research report was released for a better understanding of the significance of Eye Health.
