It's time to accelerate India's education NGOs

The beginning of August saw the Atma welcome 9 new NGOs aboard the Accelerator Programme at the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind in Tardeo. Through strategic support and a 3-year partnership, these NGOs will be guided towards stronger leadership and better funding so that they are able to improve and expand their programmes, ensuring that their students are achieving meaningful academic milestones.

These 9 organisations, namely Anandi, Maharashtra Dyslexia Association, Mona Remedial Centre, Mentor Me India, Urmi Foundation, Spark-A-Change Foundation, Sunshine School, Sankalp Charitable Trust and Suyoday Trust are going to work in partnership with Atma to make their organisations bigger, better and stronger. Through this partnership involving at least 1200 hours of support, 3 dedicated volunteers (annually) and 1 dedicated Portfolio Manager, these organisations are going to work within 10 organisational development areas to increase the capacity and impact of the work they do!

With 7 of these 9 organisations focusing on education of children with special needs, this marks the expansion of Atma's 2016 Special-ed Cohort! Founder of Spark-A-Change (SAC) Nirmala shared with us what her kids pitched in enthusiastically, "Teacher, we learn the same things now as before. But now we understand what we learn".

Here's wishing our new cohort the very best. Onwards and upwards may they go!

May 4, 2016: It was a day of reminiscence and laughter as Apni Shala, Mimaansa, Udaan Foundation, St. Willibrords School, and Oscar Foundation bid a nostalgic farewell.

Here are some of the highlights from the ceremony:

Originally starting at 2 schools and 200 students, Mimaansa has now grown to 8 schools and reaches over 1800 kids.

Talking about their exceptional growth, Pooja, Founder, Mimaansa says, “I knew nothing other than neuro-linguistic programming and special education. Today, I can comfortably talk about fundraising, HR, Monitoring & Evaluation. I also have a wider network today. This journey has given us so much! From then to now, we are spread across six schools and in the process of opening a new remedial centre and a new chapter in Nasik – Mimaansa has had a phenomenal journey.”

“The biggest impact of Atma on Apni Shala is the trust that we have built. We don’t see anyone else when we need to get something done. The first call or the first email, by default, is to Atma. The best part is that in these three years in the Accelerator Program, we didn’t feel that Atma was mentoring us. It felt as if Atma was a part of Apni Shala,” says Anukriti Goyal and Amrita Nair, Co-founders, Apni Shala.

Apni Shala was created in 2011 by three graduates of Tata Institute of Social Sciences and works to deliver life skills education programs to schools and non-profit organisations.

Udaan India Foundation is standing proud with the confidence instilled in them by Atma and is ready to take on the world.

“Along these three years, we put a lot of systems and processes in place. Clearly, we have been able to achieve only because of the motivated Atma team. With Atma, we wrote our logic models, Annual Report and in the last year, we spent a lot of time in setting up our Monitoring & Evaluation system.” says Mamta Rangan, Founder, Udaan India Foundation.

Udaan India Foundation is a Mumbai-based not-for-profit organisation working with children from low-income communities in the field of education.

Willibrord George, CEO, St. Willibrords School says they came across Atma at a time they really needed it.

“I think I have seen Atma team always taking notice of things that could help me. They are always sending me to networking events or to workshops. I have also seen Atma connecting at a deep level. If I was to put a commercial value to the relationship we had with Atma, I would just not be able to afford it.” he says

The Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility (OSCAR) is a not-for-profit organisation which provides high-quality football coaching to underprivileged boys and girls in Mumbai and across different areas of India. OSCAR runs a unique programme that not only teaches a sport to children & youth but also helps them to understand the value of education.

Ashok Rathod, Founder- Director, OSCAR Foundation beamed with excitement as he announced that Oscar Foundation had just received its FCRA.

“Firstly, Atma gave us some of the best volunteers we have ever had. Secondly, until we worked with Atma, we did not realise the importance of documentation. Whenever we went to the corporates, we were asked how do you do measure your impact? We now have all documents. And today we have the confidence to reach out to an organisation like FIFA and persuade them to support us. In the next 10 years, our goal is to reach out to 50,000 children.” he said.