April’s the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

It is raining havoc, everywhere. It is a struggle to operate residential learning centres but at the same time, are even more needed for effective training. Managing admissions, academics, campus operations has only hardened as a challenge.

This is a tough time for everyone and more so for those who can’t afford quality education or healthcare. The time only makes it even more important for NPOs to collaborate and help each other to be able to reach out to more and more individuals.

As an organisation, we continue to push ourselves to bring about whatever little change we can. Here are our updates for March & April:

The Good

1. Our residential centres continue to operate at 50% capacity with additional precautions and an effective quarantine based strategy.
2. We launched 3 months online introductory course in Software Programming & typing through Meraki. We are enabling our partners to offer the same to their students free of course.
3. Ramped up the team for Meraki as well as our residential centres (9 new joiners)
4. As we grow from 3 to 32 in team size in the last year, we have better clarity of roles and team structure.
5. Partnered with 8 State Governments to help us with admissions. Continue to partner (despite the tough times) so that while the colleges/schools are closed, young women still have a quality choice for education.
6. We are launching Code India Fellowship to identify young tech fellows who would teach programming in rural areas.
7. Response to our graphics design course has been great, and as the travel opens up, we will start the course in Pune.

The Bad

1. Anuradha, a founding team member who has been heading our Culture and Well-being at NavGurukul for about three years now is moving on. She would be starting an initiative of her own to create therapeutic learning spaces. Her exit has created a void and space for introspection for our own culture.
2. We are behind our target for admissions of our students due to the residential nature of our programs. This is going to affect our commitment to the donors. To mitigate this, we are keeping our expenses to a minimum and working on accelerated learning of the students to deliver the same results within the original budget.

The Ugly

1. With everyone deeply affected by Covid+, it isn’t easy to work right now, and at the same time, the work that we do comes with a set of responsibilities that we can’t pause.

Help

1. We are hiring for two urgent positions: Academic Lead (School of Programming) & Finance & Accounting Associate.
2. Help us connect with the organisations to partner with to take programming to the marginalised.
3. Volunteer with us to teach Programming online.

Please take care of yourself and your loved ones. Get vaccinated. And if possible, help others around you, especially those who aren’t tech-savvy to book their vaccination slots. Simply ask anyone who comes to deliver or drive you to a place.