Education Uninterrupted

You are a leader - in your family, community, organization as well as among the countable business leaders of India. This appeal is akin to a spam. I seek your attention on the subject for a few minutes.

Covid-19 and Society

This battle is underway across the world and in every walk of life.  However,  for the reasons of focus and deep impact,  I am limiting this clarion call only to education and that too only to India, for now. May I seek your indulgence. May I ask you to join this movement in any capacity that fits you.

India Education is in suspension. Livelihood is interrupted for 20million education professionals.

May I have you join the movement to keep India Education Uninterrupted?

As you know, in the current lock down, all schools, colleges, universities are all shut down. That is, about 1.3 million schools and over 40,000 colleges waiting for a savior. In addition, over 3 million tutors, counsellors and education entrepreneurs are looking for help. I am not counting an equal number of teachers and gurus in India who offer ‘classes’ from Yoga to music and from classical dance to Pilates. In short, we are looking at a world of about 20 million bread-earners and their livelihood in addition to the future of our children that needs attention right after food and clothing.

How do we get it going ? What is the solution?

We have begun to work with a few state governments and other critical stake holders to get it back on its feet.  We have multiple challenges to overcome.  Every resource or competence that you can bring will be valuable to stitch a solution on a nation-wide scale.  Here are just a few examples :

• Devices Access:
  • We need it in tens of millions. All ideas are welcome. Your connect with decision makers and business leaders in device companies is valuable. It is safe to assume that the entire bottom half needs device to access education! This is based on the diligence done with state governments for their school children.
  • For Example: For the Govt schools in NCT (Delhi), Devices that are needed would be a figure of approx. 800,000. That would cover the bottom half of the school going children from the perspective of the socio-economic pyramid. We are looking for device providers to be a part of the consortium to make the pilot successful.
  • We look to replicate this model then in various state government school systems across the country by also building viability models into the equation. That could mean about 25-40 million devices at the very least.
• Bandwidth:
  • We need bandwidth available for LIVE access. We also need solutioning for offline access too. Ideas are being debated. You are welcome join in.
• Volunteering :
  • We need volunteering for various roles - technical support, temparory teacher volunteers, doubt solving/education call centre, content generation, Educator reskilling, food/stationary support, etc,. This form is live already and dozens of volunteers are registering on a daily basis. We need thousands. All roles will be home-bound support only.
• Tools and resources :
  • Any Additional tech-tool or resource from your stable that will be useful in this @home learning solution is most welcome. Pl give us a shout.
• Funds :
  • We need (CSR or otherwise) funds to make sure that the entire project stays sustainable and at scale. This, at scale, looks like 300-500 rupees/per year/per student basis with all content delivered digitally (only). Those volunteers who need to be compensated as a continuity of their employment also need to be supported.

What all has been done already?

• National Helpdesk (website and Call-in Facility): We have set up a national-help-desk under Career Launcher Education Foundation.  Inbound requests and call are being attended to and helped with the process of learning how to become an education broadcast to deliver their classes uninterrupted. Information and support is being provided for rapid upgradation in areas including Technical, Academic and Investments.
• Offered our platform free of cost: Our platform aspiration.ai that acts as the single sign-on (SSO) for all education stakeholders including educators, institutions, learners and parents has been out as a free resource for anyone who wants to go online. I am happy to share that a couple of hyper-scale tech giants that we work with have been generous and large hearted to offer their infrastructure free-of-cost for this purpose.
• Infrastructure for volunteers: The volunteer registration form has been made live. We will lend our bandwidth to help these volunteers get oriented and be available for various tasks as mentioned elsewhere in this note.