COVID stalled many plans but like most organisations with a vision and a never-say-die attitude, we kept altitude. 2020 has been a year like no other. Here is what we did to support communities of teachers, students and parents through the year.
January 2020
The seal of approval: We received the much-awaited seal of approval from DSERT (Department of Educational Research and Training), Karnataka, when the Director, DSERT, signed an MoU with us in February. Our e-content is now approved by the DSERT for teachers to use across the state of Karnataka. We are also happy that our content will be hosted on the national ed-tech platform, DIKSHA.
New doors: In Karnataka, we adopted ten schools in Block S3 in Bangalore South. Continuing our collaboration with Tally, we implemented our e-learning program in these schools with hardware support. We added one more school to our N3 Block in Bangalore North, funded by Round Table and Featherlite.
February
Meghalaya welcomes us: Having signed an MoU with the government, Meghshala reached Shillong in Meghalaya. Whilst there, we engaged in talks about a partnership with the Education Department of Shillong. We knew there would be delays due to the pandemic but forged ahead nevertheless.
Social returns on investment: Meanwhile, one of our partners, Pratham Books,
asked us to participate in their intra-accounting of SROI, we unhesitatingly accepted,
because we were curious about how much value we brought to the community.
Through Catalyst Management Services, which conducted an in-depth study of our
intervention and helped frame our SROI for teachers, we learned that Meghshala’s
total Social Return on Investment was 15 to 1. If we were to think of it in a monetary
measure, it meant that for every Re 1 we invested in Meghshala, the teachers ‘earned’
an equivalent value of Rs.15 from it. This tells us that we have been able to create a
large-scale impact on teachers.
March
Providing online and offline support: With school forced to stay closed and education having shifted online, teachers everywhere had to grapple with the changes. Low-income schools came to a grinding halt, lacking the expertise and time to curate content for online learning. As an ed-tech company championing equitable education and also uniquely positioned to help meet these challenges, Meghshala took on the new normal and prepared in multiple ways.
We shared subject-specific videos and modules on teacher professional development on our YouTube channel. We crowdsourced teachers to voice over our e-lessons and make them available for students in a video format.
To keep in touch with our programmes on the ground, we initiated BEO-level virtual training to enable adoption and offered modules for BEOs to train and monitor teachers.
As part of our contribution to community safety, we partnered with Lenovo India to create a child-friendly video explaining the importance of hygiene and handwashing.
Meghshala (India), The Commonwealth Education Trust (UK), and Instill Education (South Africa), three organizations with years of expertise in virtual teacher professional development co-hosted a webinar organized by the Global Schools Forum (GSF) titled, “What about the Adults? Part 1: Virtual Professional Development during COVID-19”. We shared innovative approaches to providing teachers with remote professional development opportunities, especially in low-resource environments. The webinar highlighted top learnings, strategies and quick tips on how to execute virtual professional development in school networks.
May
Goa training: Early in May, Meghshala co-facilitated online training sessions along with the Government of Goa, Adhyayan and TISS; where 400 Master Trainers were trained. In these sessions, the primary issues discussed were how to teach students during the COVID crisis and how to reach the students of government schools. The topics covered were; Understanding virtual learning platforms, an introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER), unit/lesson planning, and ways to track students’ learning. These trainers went on to train close to 10,000 teachers.
Back home: In Karnataka, thanks to the MoU signed with Bill Forge Private Limited, we adopted three schools in Anekal Block, Bangalore Urban South. Continuing with our existing funders, HCL/TALLY/Round Table and Bangalore Educational Trust, we kept up our active projects and engaged the teachers by sharing the lesson videos created for YouTube and circulating these on our WhatsApp groups.
Sikkim training: Continuing our existing project, funded by CISCO, we held online
training for DIET faculty on conducting successful online classes.
Meghalaya: Supporting our work with the Meghalaya State government, the district collector of East Garo Hills District, arranged for three Block Mission Coordinators to receive an online orientation. They then selected 80 schools and 160 teachers, whom we trained.
June
Community engagement: As part of our continuous community engagement, our implementation associates in Sikkim visited their neighbourhood to encourage parents and to show them how they could continue their child’s online education using Meghshala lessons.
July
Outreach: In Karnataka, Meghshala warriors extended their support to the community in which they live and engaged the children in their community with Meghshala lessons.
Online Training: In Sikkim, we conducted online training for government school teachers who were part of the Meghshala programme. Some teachers also invited their colleagues and we were able to train a total of 160 teachers. And in Meghalaya, we started teacher training in the East Garo Hills District for 70 teachers.
August
Supporting government schemes: We assisted in the training for the MB Foundation
volunteers in Sullia Block on Meghshala lessons and video recording of our lessons.
We coordinated with teachers for the Vidyagama program, an initiative by the education department of Karnataka to ensure that children in state schools continue to learn even during the pandemic. The volunteer received training from Vidyagama and Meghshala trainers.
September
Supporting government schemes: To ensure that children in state schools continue to learn even during the pandemic, Meghshala along with M. B. Foundation, provided online training this time, for 661 government school teachers and volunteers on the Vidyagama and Meghshala programmes.
Translation work in Meghalaya: We have translated our lessons into Kannada and Hindi and now with the help of volunteer teachers, into Garo. The volunteers received technical training to conduct these translations smoothly. After we evaluated these lessons, we helped them share these with their students on WhatsApp. The recorded lessons were uploaded on YouTube.
October
Ensuring last mile connectivity: Converting lessons to videos, the Sikkim team recorded Meghshala content of grades 6,7 and 8 for Math, Science and Social Studies. These grades and subjects were chosen as the content matched the textbooks. In total, 258 videos were recorded over the month.
In Meghalaya, our team gathered testimonials from parents and teachers for internal
research purposes and to receive feedback on app accessibility.
Partnerships: In our effort to reach out to more students and parents, we partnered with ThinkZone India, who help us translate our maths content of grades 1 to 5 into Odia.
November
Karnataka: Meghshala collaborated with Bill Forge Private Limited and adopted three schools in Anekal Block, Bangalore Urban South. Meghshala project implementation personnel visited GHPS Koppa Gate and GHPS Vabasandra and GHPS Attibele to formally inaugurate the Meghshala programme in the three schools.
Meghshala with Toyota Tsusho Insurance Broker India Private Limited adopted 10 schools in Nelamangala Block, Bangalore North.
December 2020
Teacher training: We conducted teacher training sessions titled, Equipping Educators for Equitable Education, for the Bill Forge Private Limited and TTIB adopted schools.
Through the pandemic, we have been busy helping our teachers and extending our support to ensure that the existing gaps in providing equitable education for all, does not widen further. We continue to pull out all stops in our effort to reach those who need help the most.