The Real Heros of Shikhya
By Makena Naegele, Director of Growth at Shikhya
Shikhya is two-fold: we offer engaging, high quality digital education and we also source the compassionate facilitators necessary to reinforce students’ love of learning as they use our tablets. This operation however would not be scalable if it were not for our local partners who serve as the physical sites where our facilitators and technology are hosted. They are the crucial mediums that ensure we are getting the maximum reach in the areas that need it most.
In this blog post, we would like to call attention to one of our incredible partners, Nirman. Nirman is an orphanage located in Cuttack, Odisha. Nirman is an all-encompassing organization that provides the necessities to these children: nourishing food, water, shelter, and education. There are currently 2 centers for Nirman. Sarba Roy, a long time advisor of Shikhya since 2010, offers insight to the functionality of the strategic partnership.
Nirman succeeds greatly at providing food, water, and shelter, but a fundamental issue lay in the education aspect of the operation, Sarba states. Sending a child to a school is great in theory, but you have to look at if they are actually learning. The answer before Shikhya came into the picture was a resounding no.
In India, there is a well-known breakdown in the public education system due to a disproportionate student-teacher ratio, lack of high grade content, and failure to tailor the learning experience to each student. Nirman was sending children to public schools that were not focused on fostering each individual child’s development. These are children who are at different stages of learning in their education development, speaking different languages distinct to region, therefore, throwing them into a blanketed class feels foreign and is incredibly frustrating. They can’t understand the content, nor is there a teacher who can spend the time of day on each and every student going through the difficult problems, so inevitably students come to the conclusion: what is the point in even trying? What’s most heartbreaking is that these students don’t understand that it is not because of them that they aren’t doing well in school but rather circumstances they can’t control. They lose faith in themselves.
Shikhya is changing that. Nirman and Shikhya have created a complementing partnership that is self-sustainable on both ends. Shikhya provides the digital education via tablets and Nirman distributes them to the students in the language of choice.
Sarba highlights though that technology is just one part of the equation to enacting change, you need impassioned facilitators to act as a reinforcing guide to the children. Subrat is one such impassioned facilitators at the Nirman centers. He is a college student, 20-years old, who assists with children using the tablets in the evening from 4–6:30 pm every day. You can see the dramatic impact he has lead with Shikhya’s tablets from the charts below.
Sarba provides me with some insight to Subrat’s background, as her family took him in to live with them. Subrat came from a rural and economically challenged background like the other children in the center. He is living proof though that you are do not have to be a result of the circumstances given to you. Subrat is attending college simultaneously while working for Nirman where he gets paid a stipend from Shikhya for his invaluable contributions. Coupled with Shikhya’s engaging content, Subrat is motivating these children to study and learn more. He is helping them grasp the bigger picture. Sarba explains clearly that without a quality education, children are not inspired to see the big picture. According to Sarba, before Shikhya, a typical day for a child consisted of getting up, going to school and hardly learning something, coming back, going to sleep. It was a very passive and limited life. Shikhya however is “using technology to empower children through the power of education.” It is students who are properly educated that become free to think and dream big. Moreover, they are the ones that can help those in the world who don’t have a quality education. It’s a continuous positive loop- Shikhya and Nirman are helping children become students and break the glass to change the outcome of their lives and world.
We are so grateful to our facilitators like Subrat, who with our technology, are enabling children in the remote parts of Odisha to get out of the dead-end and think bigger. We are growing this partnership with Shikhya and looking to hire other college-grade facilitators to come aboard this incredible mission. Reach out to us at www.shikhya.org if you are interested to learn more or want to donate to our partners like Nirman. In this month of December, let us take a more conscious step to give and serve more.
Click here also to watch Sarba’s comment on Shikhya’s impact:
