July’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Writing these monthly emails has been close to my heart. Through these newsletters, I have met many people, and received lots of help and direction for NavGurukul. About a year ago, one of these newsletters reached the inbox of a special someone, and we’re getting married on 9th September.

It not only feels joyful to hear back when I write, it feels much lighter to share all the parts of NavGurukul — the good, the bad and the Ugly. Here are the updates from July.

The Good

1. More than 110 young women joined our centres in July.
2. Many of the young women who are joining are from states that we had zero or limited reach to — Sikkim, Tripura.
3. We are investing in our team building to ensure that we can open one new campus every two months starting October.
4. Our students continue to get jobs and good reviews. Two of our alumni recently joined BetterWorks. With the growing cohort size, we plan to reach out to the giants in the near future.
5. Typing pilot on Meraki is leading to welcoming results, however, needs fine-tuning before scaling up.
6. We finally have a full-time CA on board for accounting and finance needs.
7. Salesforce Volunteering Program is leading to some interesting results — with the students being engaged in hackathon projects, mock interviews and learning of interpersonal skills.

The Bad

1. Proper work is needed to understand and fulfil the nutrition needs of all the campuses.
2. Urgently need dev help on Kotlin (Android) for Meraki.

The Ugly

1. The financing model and reporting work at a non-profit are only getting complicated. Despite having access to a bigger set of funds, there are many limitations on the usage.

Volunteer

We are actively looking for volunteers who can help us build our technological infrastructure, curriculum or teach the 1000s of young women through the Meraki platform.