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Saajhi Samajh 1st Edition

About Saajhi Samajh 1

The 1st Edition of Saajhi Samajh was held on 27 March 2014, at 11:00 AM online.

Tech Mahindra Foundation with a vision to empower through education commits itself to creating a more equitable and inclusive society by supporting processes that will lead to sustainable transformation, social inclusion and integration. By creating opportunities that nurtures talent and enable the socio-economically marginalized to utilize their full potential, Tech Mahindra Foundation works in 3 Focus areas: Education, Vocational Training & Employment and Disability. With a network of close to 100 partners and more than a lakh beneficiaries per year across the cities of Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata the organization reinforces strengthening systems and processes to bring sustainable changes across the 3 verticals.Tech Mahindra Foundation believes that national efforts of ensuring universal elementary education to all through the Right to Education Act (RTE) 2010 needs to be reinforced by the civil society. In the last 7 years Tech Mahindra Foundation as a leading Corporate Social Responsibility organization has contributed significantly by reaching out to those whose dreams of being in the mainstream of education have been unfulfilled due to variety of reasons. Education vertical of Tech Mahindra Foundation is dedicated towards strengthening various formal and alternative programs especially for the girl child, creating and enabling environment that encourages children to come to school, reducing dropout and building knowledge systems for enhancing learning.Reflecting on the national scenario of education where 1.4 million schools run across the country with an increase in enrolment of 11.18 million more children in the last three years, children still drop out. There is an observed indicator of 80 million children dropping out without completing primary education. This situation is further alarming because of the cumulative burden of non-comprehension and thus poor learning outcomes of the children in government schools. This calls for systemic intervention and collaboration of all especially the civil society to bring improvement in school governance, change in teachers’ quality and classroom teaching processes.  Tech Mahindra Foundation, keeping in view the aforesaid objectives, has supported and is implementing some of the leading education initiatives of the country, many of which have been focusing on strengthening quality of learning in the government schools. This initiative of Tech Mahindra Foundation to run school improvement programs is called ARISE- All Round Improvement in School Education. ARISE has taken the forms of either School Take Over or School Adoption, depending on the need of the school and consensus with the government systems. The ARISE projects which involve both direct and indirect interventions, are reaching out to more than 50,000 beneficiaries across the country. Specifically the projects aim at the following dimensions – 

  • Physical dimension (infrastructure/ physical facilities) – The attempt is to ensure clean toilets, pure drinking water, well-lit and ventilated classrooms in school and integration of BaLA to promote learning.
  • Cognitive dimension (enabling learning environment) – Effort is to engage children and teachers with expert academic facilitators so as to build skills of children in language and Math. An extension of the same is also to develop resource rooms/libraries/labs for both children and staff.
  • Social dimension (relationships, values, especially equity, and the emotional environment of school). Intention is to go beyond the classroom learning and develop the 3 R’s. The project also addresses issues like sports for development, life skills, theatre and other forms of creative expressions.
  • Organizational dimension (School to be an effectively managed institution linked to the community). It has been an endeavour to bring an element of effective planning and management at all levels through setting up systematic procedures and policies and build capacities and confidence of stakeholders. Initiate and support change for quality learning environment.

Leveraging from many such experiences, one can say that these initiatives are often impacted by several socio-systemic challenges which are very diverse in nature and context. ARISE has given the Tech Mahindra Foundation team an insight into the issues which are plaguing the learning outcomes of children. We have been fortunate to witness and collaborate with some of the leading school enrichment programs. Tech Mahindra Foundation wishes to create a platform for sharing of such experiences that will create a rich tapestry of evidence based best practices that are both scalable and replicable. In this regard we plan to have a series of panel discussions- Sanjhi Samajh inviting individuals and institutions working and innovating on various dimensions of School Improvement Program in government schools. 

Our Panelists

Dr. Loveleen Kacker, CEO, TMF

Dr. Nuzhat Ali

G.M. Panse

Professor Jalaluddin

Dilbur Parikh

Dayaram

Venita Kaul

Glimpses of Saajhi Samajh 1

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