Masoom as part of its "Night School Transformation Programme" partners with schools where students study from 6.30 PM to 9.30 PM. The students (around 4000) are aged 14 to 30, who work during the day to support their family & study at night to complete their education. They mostly live in slums & from a poor socio-economic background where the total family income is between INR 2000 to 5000 per month. Masoom provides the students with critical educational infrastructure & resources
Night school students have to complete their studies in half the time of day school students. They do not have access to basic facilities in schools - like science lab, computer education, etc. They are unaware of various "skilled" career options. They have little exposure in areas of Science & Technology. To address this issue, Masoom ran a pilot in one school with Level Up Village in US which was a success but ran into a bottleneck due to lack of space and necessary equipment in the schools
To address the issue of lack of space & equipment, Masoom along with Elkem AS launched Tech Wheels bus. This is a mobile van with 14 laptops, internet access, seats 28 students, has a projector that will reach LevelUp Village's STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Math) programs to 500 Night School Students in Mumbai in a year, also interact with students in US. The bus will be used for imparting training, Community Engagement & an incentive for out of school students to enrol in schools
Spreading awareness of the importance of Education, Skilling in other areas which would provide better job opportunities for these students, the ability to see the outside world through interaction with students over Skype and Video Letters, will broaden the horizon of the students. Through Community engagements via the bus Masoom is hoping to increase the enrolment of out of school students thus ensuring students complete their basic education - the reach for Year 1 is expected to be 1050
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).