Quest for Quality Education at VIDYA

Dear Esteemed member of VIDYA,

Greetings from the VIDYA family! 

As we complete 35 years of Educating, Empowering and Transforming lives of  children, youth and adults in 2019-20, it is my pleasure to share with you our first E-Annual Report for the year 2019. 

This year’s Annual Report is a testimony of the work VIDYA has done in the year 2019 and the teams across India working tirelessly with VIDYA’s spirit and ethos. In the same spirit, we had planned many new projects pan-India in the year 2020-21. However, COVID-19 has changed everything. People, globally, adapted, evolved and re-strategized like never before. We, too, pivoted our educational programs to remote learning, closed some of our community projects, distributed rations to our communities, engaged our women in mask making, conducted webinars and organized gadget donation drives.

Since many of our beneficiaries lack resources and many have lost their employment due to corona virus, we have an urgent requirement for smart phones / laptops / tablets for our students to be able to continue remote learning. I appeal to all of you to please donate your used smart phones / laptops / tablets to VIDYA for use by our less privileged children. We have also partnered with an organization, Budli.in in their Device to Dream campaign, wherein, old devices (working or defective) – smart phone, laptop or tablet – are collected free of cost from any location across India, and refurbished/monetized to enable education for underprivileged children. Please submit details of used device(s) you/your organization would like to contribute using the Budli link provided in the attachment.

The great heights we have achieved would not have been possible without you. We are truly grateful to all our well-wishers, donors and supporters for their kind donations and support through the years, during lockdown and beyond. You keep us going and help us achieve great heights!

More insights are in this report.

We hope you enjoy reading the stories of transformation and the impact of VIDYA through education, empowerment and transformation.

With Warm Regards,
Rashmi Misra

• VidyaAnnualReport_20192020.pdf (PDF)
  

COVID-19 is devastating for everyone. But the worst affected are those who were already severely disadvantaged to begin with.

Less privileged communities are dependent on family, friends, neighbours, government programs, small businesses and NGOs like us for meeting all their daily and monthly needs. During this COVID-19 lockdown those options are severely constrained, and there is also the additional need for reliable supplies and personal protective equipment.

Since VIDYA already has a foothold and many decades worth of trust among the communities we work in inside Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, we have initiated a program to help all those we can in these difficult times as well as rapidly adapt all our programs to a tech-based medium.

About VIDYA's Webinar Series

Further, VIDYA has started a new webinar series called the "Knowledge Series". The first episode was on May 8th 2020, and our first guest was Prof. Mudalgya, one of the heads of the famous Aakash Low Cost Computing project. Our webinar is a weekly program that covers all kinds of topics related to learning, education, empowerment and wellness. It was especially designed to help people, including VIDYA ourselves, adapt and find opportunities to thrive during these tough times caused by the COVID-19 crisis. We recently hosted one of India's most renowned entrepreneurs and corporate leaders, Mr.Narayana Murthy, on our show. You can watch that incredible episode here. 

We've attached some of our newsletters for these past months. Please go through them to know more about what VIDYA has been doing. 

• VIDYA_Vaani.pdf (PDF)
  
• Voice_of_VIDYA_Mumbai_April_May_2020.pdf (PDF)