India – Driving Education Empowerment and Development Foundation (IN-DEED Foundation), is a registered non-profit working in the education space since 2014 through hundreds of dedicated volunteers and harnessing technological tools. We work with government and rural schools to improve education quality, academic record and digital empowerment – preparing students for the 21st century workplace by equipping them with requisite skills. Our geography of work has been Western Rajasthan, specially the districts of Jodhpur and Pali.
As the corona pandemic forced school shutdown, we developed an easily accessible, free AdvancED tech solution called PLATform enabling live classes, assessments and training.
IN-DEED has recently tied up with BYJU’s, India’s leading digital content provider to give government school and rural students in Rajasthan free access to their education app. This will enable students to learn difficult concepts, access high quality audio-video curriculum content, clear doubts, attempt tests and perform well in school.
IN-DEED Foundation has also signed a MoU with the Rajasthan Council of School Education (RCScE) in August 2022 to improve understanding of curriculum subjects – impacting learning outcomes, improve academic performance and providing digital and valuable 21st century skills to government school students in 4 districts i.e. Barmer, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Pali.
In a novel initiative-to equip Government school students with 21st century skills , IN-DEED Foundation in partnership with Tinkertoy has started coding classes for 60 odd students of grade 7 and 9 for MGSS School,Pabupura,Jodhpur.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
- 1.What is the main objective/goal behind the inception of the IN-DEED Foundation? What made you launch this foundation?
The main objective behind launching IN-DEED Foundation was to provide education and exposure to government school students at par with private schools. We believe that proper learning and access to 21st-century skills in school will enhance employability and mould children into more responsible, balanced, and grounded future citizens of India who can easily adapt to changing social mores and workplace environments. Coming from a rural background, I have observed the transformation education can bring about in one generation. From a young age, I realized the privilege that the accident of birth bestowed upon me., and I felt it was my duty to give back to society.
- 2.Tell us about your journey and important achievements/milestones
Starting with volunteer-supported extra classes in a dozen schools in 2014-15, we now work in 100+ schools in 4 districts of Rajasthan reaching 45,000 students in the academic session 2022-23. We have grown from bootstrapped organization to working on CSR projects with some of the leading corporate houses in India viz. Aditya Birla Capital Ltd., Kajaria Ceramics Ltd. Axis Bank Ltd., Amber Enterprises India Ltd. In 2022, IN-DEED was chosen as one of the partners by BYJUs under their ‘Education for All’ scheme. We have signed an MoU with the Rajasthan Council of School Education under the Rajasthan Education Initiative to provide quality education to 1 lakh students in West Rajasthan.
- 3.What are the various initiatives you have commenced? Could you share the impact of these initiatives? How many lives were positively affected by them?
50,000+ students have been directly impacted by our work since 2014. From 2014 to 2019, Y-o-Y around 400 class X students in intervention schools improved their individual grades while the Board exam passing percentage increased by over 15% points from 70% to approx. 90%.
Our Initiatives:
- Adhyayan: Facilitating onsite and online classes to explain difficult topics for enhancing understanding, improving academic performance
- Jigyasa: training sessions and workshops on coding, AI, IoT, robotics, aero-modeling, practical demonstration of science experiments
- Samiksha: Regular assessments of curriculum subjects
- Sambhavna: Personality development, Soft-skills, Learning Camps
- E-Kaushal: The first fully-equipped Digital Resource Centre in rural Pali providing practical computer training & digital skills
- 4.How did Covid impact the education of children in rural areas? How did you carry on with the initiatives?
Unlike counterparts in public schools, most rural and government school students had no option for online learning during the pandemic. To overcome these challenges, and halt and reverse the learning loss, IN-DEED developed PLATform Edu-tech Solution for online classes and digital assessments. At present assessments are conducted on tablets in school, in 2021-22 despite covid-19, IN-DEED worked with 4,000+ students from 38 schools. The performance of students in the 2022 class X board exams rose by approx. 5% – both overall pass percentage and percentage of students securing Ist division (compared to 2019 results).
- 5.What are the key focus areas for IN-DEED Foundation in 2023?
IN-DEED plans to expand its geographical footprint while implementing existing in-depth programs at the 100 intervention government model schools. We hope to reach out to over 1 lakh students in 2023. We plan to conduct annual edutainment fairs called Taabar (meaning child in Rajasthani) for government and rural school students in each district.
We plan to streamline and expand the reach of the Prerak-Mitra program, a novel initiative wherein undergraduate and graduate students volunteer are attached to individual government school students to guide, mentor, counsel, and handhold them throughout the year for improved academics and overall personality development, individual growth and helping make well-thought-out career-planning decisions.
- 6.How do you think technology will transform the education space in India, especially in rural areas or small towns?
Technology in the education sector can be a ground-breaking and transformative tool, as long as equitable access can be ensured for the underserved and have-nots. Or else, it will only end up increasing the digital divide between urban and rural students, further widening the gulf between India and Bharat.
Tech-enabled learning can be a huge leveler, enabling us to deliver high-quality audio-visual curriculum content at scale to all corners of the nation, in a cost-effective manner. Tools like IN-DEED’s PLATform solution and campaigns like ‘Education for All’ can bring quality education to millions of rural and government school students.
- 7.Any advice for young entrepreneurs wanting to foray into the ed-tech space?
Most ed-tech companies still focus on private school students in metro cities and urban areas as their major clients. For budding entrepreneurs, there is a huge opportunity at the bottom of the pyramid. If only they can look at rural and small-town India as potential customers tweaking products and solutions to meet their requirements. A few things have to be kept in mind for this:
– Since devices (smartphones mostly) are shared among household members this clientele will only have limited access for a few hours each day. Allowing multiple log-ins for all children in a family to access learning on one device will help.
– Data charges matter a lot to them, therefore who uses the daily data limit, and for what purpose is significant? Therefore, data consumption for learning has to be kept at the lowest possible level.
– Language and ease of access are of utmost importance – for e.g., most rural school children and their family members do not have individual email IDs. One must ensure access directly through phone numbers or some other simpler means.
– Demand-led solutions will fare better than aggressive marketing of products – content that is in sync with the state board curriculum, and in the right tone of Hindi/ regional languages will appeal more. Regular assessments displaying test results in a simple readable format for parents, comparing performance with peers, and tracking individual improvement over time should help a lot.