Freedom to Shine- A campaign to educate rural kids

The inception of Genext Students, an online learning solution dates back to 2013. However, it was in 2016 that they metamorphosed into a hybrid home tutoring platform.After a thorough six-months-research in Raigad district near Mumbai, earlier this year, the organisation realised that the quality of ground level education in the villages was quite suboptimal. Having worked with students in an urban population they realised, to have an impact they must cater at all the levels– urban as well as rural. "The solutions for urban India cannot be the same for rural India owing to several on-ground challenges and limitations," says AliAsgar Kagzi, Co-founder, Genext Students. Consequently, they came up with their new campaign 'Freedom to Shine' in August 2017 that stems from their vision of impacting lives through education.

'Freedom to Shine'

"There are several factors that make this campaign different from several other existing social/corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes and campaigns for education," asserts Kagzi, who believes only a blended solution of technology and in-person teaching can help upgrade the quality of education in rural areas. "And this is what we are striving to do through this campaign," reckons the 30-year-old.Genext Students' verified tutors, tutorpreneurs (combination of tutor + entrepreneur) tutor the students. They go to the identified schools in the villages and not only teach the kids but also train the teachers.Since this campaign is a pilot program, the campaigners are working on a pro-bono basis. These are highly passionate individuals, continues Kagzi, hence are willing to contribute in whatever manner they can. "We've carefully identified and trained tutors to ensure that the desired learning outcomes are achieved," he says.The ''tutorpreneurs''are selected through stringent criteria. After the profile verification, they have to take specially designed language and subject proficiency tests, followed by process orientation which happens online as well as in person. After all these processes, they become tutorpreneurs. However, their training remains as an ongoing process with regular skill development workshops along with content, and study plans. They travel to these villages every week. The travel, logistics, lesson plans, and the other things are worked out by Genext Students team to give them maximum support for this noble cause, he affirms. One of the aims of this campaign is to train-the-trainers as well so that they achieve sustainable impact, affirms Kagzi, the teachers will be trained with newer teaching methods so the kids can have a fun time learning in the classroom."Looking at the infrastructure limitations in these villages, exclusive online solutions can't work. Hence, we have designed the course in such a manner that it includes 80% offline and 20% online content," he asserts. The academic team of Genext Students has designed a special course for the students. Based on feedback they received during the research, they've started training the students in english using marathi as a medium of instruction as these students need maximum support in learning english. They'll be taking up subjects like maths and science in future."These kids are very sharp but they need adequate tools to present themselves," smiles Kagzi, who feels the program is extremely well received.They're closely monitoring the progress of this campaign and plan to replicate this methodology across schools in villages near the cities that they're operational in.