For a good cause

Vidyakansha was founded by 3 friends Aishwarya Mishra (ISB Hyderabad MBA student), Arushi Verma (IIM Bangalore Alumna) and Vartika Chaudhary (IIM Ahmedabad Alumna) in May'20, when the world was grappling with unprecedented times, in the foreground of the global pandemic. From its humble beginnings of 5 volunteers teaching 10 students over WhatsApp, Vidyakansha has grown into a digital educational revolution comprising 270+ highly qualified volunteers providing free, quality education over a robust technology platform to 840+ students in 5 states of the country- Telangana, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Bengal and Gujrat.

The COVID lockdown brought education to a standstill for children all over the world. However, this disruption hit some worse than others. Inequalities in the society- be it geographic or economic, tend to percolate into education; an inevitability exacerbated by the pandemic. With schools shut down, and no provisions or resources for online education, the numbers of dropout rates in rural government schools soared.

Vidyakansha was started with humble initiative to re-ignite the joy of learning for the children in the Pakhrauni Village of Bihar, Aishwarya's hometown. A couple of classes with the students was all it took to uncover the glaring gaps in the quality of Rural education. It was a rude awakening for us to discover that students of the 10th grade were unable to comprehend class 6th level concepts. A weak academic & inter-personal foundation festers Rural children's self-confidence & motivation to excel, in turn, restricting their career growth and development.

What began as one-on-one tutoring by Vidyakansha's volunteer-teachers for 5 eager students over WhatsApp Video call, gradually transformed into a nation-wide movement for the upliftment of Rural India encompassing diverse course offerings like female hygiene, mental health, career counselling in addition to best-in-class academic learning. Vidyakansha have now amassed a motivated base of 270+ volunteers from the leading institutes of the country who are enabling a digital knowledge transfer to 840+ students across 5 states and 47 villages in rural India. Our journey has been nothing short of phenomenal.

The most recent feather on their cap is that has been our partnership with the Telangana government to revolutionize digital learning in government schools. Krishna Aditya, IAS' 14 of the Mulugu District in Telangana to set up smart classrooms in the rural government schools in Mulugu which would be gateways for quality teaching by our volunteer-teachers, during school hours with proactive support from school authorities and school teachers.

The first phase of our pilot in the Mulugu District has commenced and has been running successfully since 1st Feb'21, in which we have set up 6 smart classrooms, in 3 government schools, with over 12 laptops, speakers, projectors and modems over which the nearly 360 students of classes 9th and 10th are receiving free, quality education from Vidyakansha's volunteer-teachers.

Vidyakansha's curriculum and testing mechanism is driven by data-analytics and we adopt a constructivist and practical approach of teaching to ensure the holistic growth and development of the student. With a strict teacher to student ratio of 10:1, we at Vidyakansha ensure that each student is getting the time and attention, he or she deserves.

In the second phase of our expansion, we hope to reach out to and transform education for more students in the Mulugu district as well as other remote districts of Telangana through our smart classrooms.