Aiming to provide quality education to less privileged girls - Unnayan Learning Hub

Some days come with a strange series of events which unveil an extreme of the spectrum we have almost forgotten because we have been living on the other end. I happened to have such a day yesterday. I grabbed my lunch in a hurry after getting off a call with a techie entrepreneur who is trying to change the way children learn by creating high end technology enabled educational products. The hustle was for being in time for the next call with the co-founder of Unnayan Learning Hub, Devanik Saha. This conversation shifted my virtual presence from the world where children were learning using smartphones and tablets in air conditioned rooms to a two room humble setting in Sangam Vihar (Asia’s largest unauthorized colony) where Devanik and his co-founder Swati Rao are trying to provide basic education to children from nearby areas.

Devanik and Swati took co-founded Unnayan instead of taking up the Masters in Development Studies with Sussex University and Masters in Social Policy at LSE respectively. These two young co-founders met in the classrooms of government school where Devanik was a fellow with Teach for India and the law student, Swati used to volunteer in the same school during her free time. Devanik finished his 2 years of teaching with TFI and Swati had taken her final exams in the National Law University, Raipur and both of them were deciding on which way to go ahead.

Reminiscing the days when his two year fellowship period was coming to an end, Devanik says, “I did not want to leave my students and certainly could not think of not teaching anymore. There was an urge to continue and I chose to go with it.” Being in the system and seeing the existing problems first hand for 2 years, Devanik was saddened seeing many aspects of educational system but was motivated to do his bit as well.

The gender discrimination in the less privileged sections of the society in the education sector is not hidden behind any curtain. Witnessing many instances where a boy child of the family was sent to a private school where the standards of education are better as compared to government schools where the girl child was studying, if at all she was enrolled in school.

Less privileged girls coming from uneducated families neither get any platform to aid them in gaining knowledge and developing life skills nor do they have access to facilitative resources. And these promising girls are denied opportunities to receive wholesome education, severely denting their chances to improve their lives. Unnayan aspires to give these girls a meaningful and wholesome education to tap their inner potential. By instilling a sense of change and responsibility in them Unnayan aspires to be the learning hub for girls which empower them to bring a change in their community.

Started 2 months back with some grants from two professors and with a crowdfunding of USD 1150, Unnayan currently has 40 girls enrolled who are taught by the two co-founders. They are running primary education program and early childhood education program at a fee of INR 180 per month and INR 150 per month respectively. The focus is on teaching social science and science to primary-level girls belonging to both English and vernacular medium.

Devanik shares enthusiastically that Unnayan aims to run 2 centres with 400 girls the by end of an year in Sangam Vihar aspires to launch 3 more learning centers with 1000 girls in different slum areas. The learning hubs will use activity and project based learning as teaching tools and plan on using phonics program to impart English language skills. Eventually they will also be looking towards a transition to teachers from the community who would be recruited and trained before they start teaching. These teachers would help transform the community’s mindset about girls’ education and also, financially support their own families.

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