'Holistic Development'for 300 Poor Kids in India

Dear Friends,

Warm greetings!  You will be glad to hear that our after school programmes have become a great support to children during this pandemic. It almost replaced the main stream schooling now as children hardly have any schooling due to lock down since last academic year.

Our after-school programmes were aimed to keep children from dropping out from school. It has become a great success and have helped thousands of children to complete education and realise their potential, because of the generous support from all of you.  Our programmes not only concentrate on keeping the children in school but also in ensuring that all the children enrolled are getting opportunities for their holistic development. Greater efforts are needed here to keep a continuous survey of communities as our project also cover tribal migratory population with illiterate parents.  Even during lockdown, our field workers are trying their best to reach out physically as the remote support was not very effective with less access to internet and lack of smart devices in some communities. To children without access to internet connection and smart phones , we provide hard copies of activity worksheets in these areas through our social workers and they make sure that the children complete their assignments on time. Children are encouraged to take photos of their work and submit it to the teachers for checking.

As it seems, virtual learning will continue for another year, we are helping our students to register with an educational app, an online education app for school children. Along with that we have also distributed school stationaries to children to ensure that all the students are continuing education. All our activities like self- defence classes, spoken English, career guidance, sports , art and craft .. etc are taking place on online platforms. Recently we have also experimented with  virtual exposure visits for our students and showed them places of historical importance. I am glad to share a feedback from a student about our program.

Harsha- our beneficiary-speaks…..

Harsha has been with  IDEA foundation for a total of 14 years. And in those years, she has grown from being a small, naive, fearful girl to a confident, independent, and fearless woman. The journey was not easy; there were times, as Harsha reminiscences,  where she felt that she would never sound confident while speaking English. However, after the first spoken English class that taught 9th-grade level English to her, she felt her confidence in her ability to master a complex language to come back. With the aid of courses that not only taught her to speak a universal language but also empower her with weekend classes of learning how to manage a bank account, self-defense classes, etc she became confident in her abilities. All the students, including Harsha, were provided with all necessary school supplies, including but not limited to books, compass, study materials, etc. Harsha believes that the knowledge and opportunities that the IDEA foundation has enlightened her with have made her a confident student and sister and most of all, a proud daughter to her family. She now firmly believes that she has a much stronger, holistic approach to tackling her studies and securing a potentially good job. Lastly, She also very admirably mentioned how IDEA foundation, even in the face of a global pandemic, managed to procure and conduct online classes so as not to deter students from their path to becoming successful individuals.

The year-long lockdown is a great loss of children especially from rural villages, but we make all the efforts to continue different offline activities and ensure that at least communities under our project get enough support during this pandemic.

Thank you for being a continuous support to us!